logging in some quality bro time after the end of the world
by zweebie
Summary: The apocalypse comes, and the siblings don't escape. They all die. Klaus does not. (AU) Klaus and Five stop the apocalypse together.
1. They Were Meant to Save the World

The week leading up to the apocalypse (or the ten months leading up to the apocalypse, depending on how you look at it,) is wild, even by Klaus's standards. Their old man was right, Klaus supposes. They were meant to save the world.

They did terribly, though. _I mean, acceptable for a first try. Reggie can't expect us to get it _all _right_. But it sure doesn't seem like they're getting a second chance any time soon.

The day before the apocalypse is especially insane. Five had dragged them all out to a little house in the city, supposedly where Harold Jenkins had been staying with Vanya. It'd been empty—a sweet little domestic home, sure, but completely devoid of any clues—and they'd had to go on a wild (fruitless) goose chase in order to find them. They'd been lucky enough to pass a poster tacked up on the wall for Vanya's performance—_The Saint Pluvium Orchestra, _with soloist Vanya Hargreeves. It had taken a while to get ahold of Luther and Allison over the phone, but they got into the orchestra hall early enough.

Vanya had been onstage. Jenkins had been waiting in the wings.

Vanya looked—Vanya looked awful. Something in her eyes looked she looked insane, dangerous. Her suit was white, and she was so caught up in the haunting and wild suite that she didn't see her siblings peering through the door. Luther, Diego and Klaus had pulled back and ran into the lobby to access the situation.

"So what's the plan?" Klaus asks.

"Oh, you're—" Luther says, and then does that little thing where his eyes flick upward and he freezes for a second. Luther hadn't even thought of him, Klaus can tell. "You're the lookout."

"The _lookout_?" Klaus cries, but Luther and Diego turn away. "Seriously?" He'd always been lookout as a kid, but he had actual powers now. He'd learned to control them. It wasn't his fault that none of his siblings ever took him seriously.

He's just grabbing a wrap from the food truck across the road when the ground beneath him starts to shake, quiet but steady. "Oh, shit," he mutters, looking around.

"Is that gunfire?" Ben asks, and now that Klaus is listening for it, he can hear it.

"Oh, holy—"

The scary lady—the assassin one from the motel room—is walking down the street, and she looks like hell. There's what looks like a single handcuff hanging off of her bloody wrist, and her face is bloody in a way that Klaus doesn't want to look at for long. She's walking sure and steady toward the theater, and she's got murder in her eyes. The siblings are probably right out in the open, and she's gonna kill them.

"Go time, go time," Klaus whispers to Ben, clapping his hands and turning towards the main doors.

"But what about the shaking? And the gun—" Ben is cut off as the ground beneath them jolts violently. Klaus falls to the ground, and when he rolls over, he sees that the assassin lady is on her side, struggling to stand.

"The hell—" he mumbles, looking up at the theater. The ground beneath him starts its shaking again, slower but quickly growing in strength. "Oh, holy shit."

"What the hell is happening?" Ben asks. They clamber clumsily to their feet, but the quaking ground is trying its absolute goddamn best to keep them down.

Somehow, Klaus manages to stand. He hears a crash from behind him, but doesn't take the time to turn around and see what had happened. Instead, he runs at the main doors of the hall, throwing them open.

There's a crack climbing its way up the wall across the lobby. Dust is raining down. "Guys!" Klaus yells. "Diego, Allison! Luther!" He can hear screaming from inside the concert hall, and he goes to run up the stairs, but suddenly the walls are cracking, and the floor leaps up and throws him down and there's something crashing down on him

Time has passed. There's a little girl in front of him, and then she's gone, and then he doesn't remember her at all.

Something's happened.

Klaus groans a little as he pushes himself off the ground, blinking the soot out of his eyes. They're stinging, and he can't see for a good few seconds. There's something heavy leaning on him and he uses the shaky, fuzzy strength he has to heave it off.

The first thing that registers are the dancing flames everywhere, clinging to the stone and climbing up the walls. Next are the rocks beneath his fingers, scratching into his skin.

When his vision clears, he has to blink several times to make sure that he isn't still half-blind. Everything's either the color of cement or gray, and the buildings around him have collapsed into ashy ruins. The thing he'd pushed off of himself was a solid chunk of rock, seemingly from the roof of the orchestra.

Somehow he's not injured at all. Well, _at all _might be an overstatement—his shoulders hurt like hell and there's an ugly scratch across his leg, but he's not, well, _crushed, _which would be expected if the ceiling fell on you.

Klaus looks down at the ground around him, spots a dark lump in the ashy landscape a few meters away. The entire building has collapsed, save a few spare feet of the wall around the outside, so the sky is large above him and he can see everything. (It's light out, which is notable. He could swear that the concert had happened in the evening.)

Klaus pulls his foot out from under a lump of stray cement and shakes it out, pushing himself weakly to his feet. The dark shape is lying just beyond the worst of the chaos—there are shards of polished wood (presumably instruments) everywhere, and way too many bodies. Klaus's limbs are shaky, but he manages to stumble through it all to the largest body, barely reaching out to touch it before he falls back, pulls his hands away like they've been burnt.

It's Luther. The dark shape was his overcoat, and he's lying there and staring up with glassy eyes.

"Oh, no, Luther," Klaus whimpers, and he doesn't bother holding back a sob. Luther has that valiant hero look on his face, and his hand is outstretched and his fingers form a claw, like he'd been holding something. The fingertips are bloody. "Christ," Klaus mutters. The struggle must have been quite something.

Klaus turns and crawls a little farther over, reaching the next body. It's Diego, lying face-down, knife in hand. "Oh, Diego, you dumbass." The sobs are really coming now, and Klaus clamps a hand over his mouth to make them quieter.

Fuck.

He turns and sits squarely down in the wreckage. There are more bodies—he stumbles warily over to Allison's puts a hand on her cheek lovingly. Her hand is up by her head, like she'd tried to catch herself as she fell. Her fingernails are dark red.

She and Klaus used to sit in her room and paint their fingernails together, singing Britney Spears at the top of their lungs. Those were some of the few good memories Klaus had of growing up in that huge, loveless house.

He supposes the house is gone, now actually. Klaus chokes and lets the tears fall without wiping them away. He reaches out, shuts her eyes with shaking fingers.

"Vanya?" Klaus calls, standing up, but his voice is weak and he isn't expecting an answer. What the hell had happened? There was clearly some sort of energy coming from Vanya, but how? Was it her that made the buildings crumble?

She didn't have powers. She couldn't have powers.

Why hadn't she ever told them? Why did she do this? And what did Harold Jenkins have to do with it? All Klaus knows is that Vanya had been dating him during the final week (even though Klaus had been happy Vanya was happy, dear _lord _she had bad taste) and that Harold had defended her apparently until his last breath. Even as she, Klaus is forced to assume, destroyed the world.

No. No. It was Vanya. _Vanya, _for god's sake. Their sister. Their sweet little sister, who would perform her violin for them in her bedroom. They would stage little concerts, make a thing of it. Vanya, who would always cry when they fought.

What the hell had happened while Klaus was on lookout?

And of course he was on lookout. Of course Klaus was out buying food with Ben during the literal apocalypse. Of course he did nothing to help, and now everyone was dead. Maybe because of him.

Klaus is always the useless one, always the fucking liability. "_God!" _Klaus roars, kicking the ground uselessly. All the times he's messed up, all the times he hasn't helped, all the times he's ruined missions by turning up high, or by being afraid of his own power. He'd been standing outside the museum doors, even, when Ben had—

Fuck all of this. Dammit.

Klaus feels the beginning of a raging headache building in his temples, and he sobs weakly. "Oh, no," he whimpers.

Sobriety. _Completely _overrated. He wants to see his siblings, but he can't quite control who comes and who doesn't. And the number of people who must've died is staggering. Even the thought of all of them manifesting makes Klaus feel like he can't breath.

"_Well, you're lucky," _Diego had said. "_At least when you lose someone you can still see them whenever you want." _

_Ha_.

As Klaus looks at the wreckage around him, he has the sudden sense of _deja vu_. _Lying down on a blisteringly hot Vietnamese night, blood all over his hands, the only person he's ever loved lying dead beside him. The searing agony in his chest._

Standing on a chilly November day, fires raging everywhere, his siblings lying dead around him. Klaus can't help but laugh. "Oh, of course this is me. Of course. I'm the only—the only one that has no survival instinct, no real power, no real skill. Of course it's me stuck after the fucking apocalypse comes." He raises two choice fingers to the sky, and yells "Fuck you!"

The sky says nothing.

Klaus wipes the tears off his eyes again, probably doing terrible damage to his eyeliner. He steps not-too-gingerly over the wreckage towards a spot a few feet behind Luther, looking for a certain someone.

"Yeah, there you are," Klaus says, squatting down by the body of Harold Jenkins and grinning down at him. "Hey, I bet you're happy. I bet you're just overjoyed at the way things turned out," he says, patting Harold's cheek a little too roughly.

He gets no response.

"Is this what you wanted? Huh? Is it? Well, I really hope it is, because my brothers and my sister, are over there _dead! _Do you hear me? They're fucking _dead _because of you!" Klaus turns and kicks one of the chunks of rock, trying to get some of his anger out, but he must have overestimated his strength, because it just really, really hurts. "Dammit! Shit," Klaus says, and then roars wordlessly at nothing and everything.

Klaus feels a wave of nausea rush over him and he grits his teeth. He's learned over the past few days that he's got more control over his power than he'd thought possible, but keeping the ghosts back is an effort that's getting more difficult by the moment. He wants his brothers and sister back, he wants them back so bad, but he doesn't have the control to let only them through, and he can't stomach the idea of being overwhelmed by the dead. Klaus lets out a half-laugh, half-sob. He's a pathetic coward.

He needs a drink.

There was a bar, a few buildings down from the concert hall, he remembers. Klaus clambers over the chunks of cement, not looking at the mess that the seating area had become. There's an area full of broken glass, and Klaus rushes over, getting on his hands and knees and rifling through the broken bottles. He can't care less about the scratches, and his hands are soon covered in fresh blood. "Thank Christ," he mumbles, pulling a small, miraculously intact flask out from the mess. He unscrews the bottle, almost dropping it, and downs the contents. "Oh, thank god," he mutters as the edges of everything blur. He sits down, drops his head back, lets his eyes fall shut. "That's. . .that's nice."

What does he do now? The world is dead, and it's not like he knows how to survive. He'd learned how to live off the land in Vietnam—what plants to eat, what to use to bandage a wound. But he's not in Vietnam, and even if he was, all the plants have been killed, buried in the wreckage.

"Oh, no, go away," he moans when he sees a small figure walking out through the ruins. Not the ghosts again.

But—

But he's drunk. Well, not drunk, he can handle much more than this, but not sober. Klaus pushes himself up, wiping his eyes. "Hey!" he yells, waving both arms above his head. The boy turns.

Klaus knows those schoolboy shorts.

"You," Klaus says, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth. "Hey, Five!"

There's nothing friendly in Klaus's tone, but Five must not notice, because he starts clambering over the rocks towards Klaus, a relieved smile breaking over his face. "Kl—Klaus? I didn't—I saw your body. I thought you were dead. Are you the only one that survived?"

Klaus can't believe this. "What the hell, man?" he yells, and Five stumbles to a stop.

"Excuse me?"

"So what did you do? Did you jump forward? Skip the dirty part? Too pretty to die with the rest of us?"

"I don't know—what the hell are you talking about?"

"You saw my body? Did you see everyone else's? You were supposed to save us, Five. You were supposed to come back and save us. But they're dead now, because you jumped off and didn't do shit to help the rest of us."

"Klaus, I—I don't know what—I wasn't even there, dumbass. I don't know what the hell happened!"

There's something broken in Five's face, plus something else that Klaus hasn't seen in a long, long time. But Klaus's vision is blurred from tears and he can't bring himself to care about the finer details. "So what's your grand plan now? Going to save us all miraculously? Use your powers to go back and stop it from happening? Or are you just gonna give up, go on your—on your merry way?"

"I don't know what the hell you're talking about. All I did was jump from dinner, and here I am. Someone fucked up, but it wasn't me!"

"I—" Klaus says, but cuts himself off. Five's crying. Klaus didn't think he'd see any vulnerability from the old man ever again, not after he got stuck in the apocalypse for fifty years. Unless—what did Five just say?

"Aw, shit," Klaus says, stepping backward, both hands over his mouth in shock. Five steps back, looking up defiantly. "You're him! You're him."

"The hell?"

"How old are you?"

"I'm thirteen," Five says dubiously.

"Oh, my god," Klaus says, and he can't keep the emotion out of his voice. A different emotion now. He steps forward and pulls Five in for a hug. "Oh, kid, I'm so, so sorry."

"Are you high?" Five asks, and there's venom in his voice, but he grabs Klaus tightly. "What the hell happened?" His voice is quieter, broken.

Klaus's mouth quirks as he pulls back. "Yeah, I'm not sure—I don't know if I can say, spoilers and all," he says, and he lets out a sob. "Oh, god, you're so young."

"What do I do? What role do I have in this?" Five gestures vaguely at the destruction around them.

"No, no, you did nothing. You were magnificent." Klaus grins, and it's genuine. _Our little psycho_. "I suppose, actually. . .I suppose your body's somewhere here too."

"Jesus," little Five breaths, sitting in the rubble. "We lost?"

"Yeah, we um—" Klaus looks up at Five "—we lost. And I'm so, so sorry. You—you deserve better. You. . .tried your zappy thing, right?"

"Yeah, it doesn't work." Five wipes his eyes, steps back. Something in his face hardens again. "So if we want to get out of here, we gotta get busy. Did you have a plan? Is there something we can do?"

Klaus wants to give him hope, wants to tell him that they can time travel back, that there's a way out of this. But he knows that that's not the case. He knows that Five is here, alone, for a very, very long time.

Klaus doesn't lie, unless it's about his own well-being. But Klaus looks up at Five, and he's so, so young. There's such innocence in his angry little eyes. So he says it anyway. "Yeah, yeah. I mean, no plan, but we can, y'know, we can figure something out."

"Okay," Five says, nodding fast. "I'll. . .go look for food."

"Yeah, you, you go do that. I think there's a convenience store somewhere off in that direction. I'll figure something out," he says again, and Five turns and hurries off.

Klaus reaches into his coat pocket on instinct, and who could've guessed, there's a joint there. "Of all the things to get through the apocalypse," he says, and pulls a lighter out as well. All of his clothes are intact, too, thank god.

Sobriety is definitely overrated, and definitely not worth being drowned in the ghosts of the entire world.

He watches Five hurry off. Klaus can't connect him to the man he knows Five will become. To the angry, exhausted man that had dragged them all on this little journey this past week. Klaus lets himself wonder for a moment what might have happened, had Five stayed at the academy. Had he not run out during dinner. Would he be as messed up as the rest of them? Maybe, but at least he wouldn't've been alone.

But it's too late for that.

Oh, well. Best get comfortable.

**I'm not sure whether or not I want to make this into a multiple chapter fic, so please write a review if you want more! as always, thank you so much for reading and please leave a like or a review if you enjoyed it!**


	2. Klaus

Klaus hadn't been surrounded by ghosts, really surrounded, many times in his life. Outside of the mausoleum, the only real exposure Klaus had to death was their missions, and they didn't kill enough people for that.

Usually, the deal was that they would pick off one, maybe two of the bad guys. Reggie expected that much. "You children have an image to maintain," after all. They were superheroes, not cops.

But they were kids, in the end. They couldn't kill people, even criminals, on a weekly basis. So Diego would get one of them with his knives, Luther would throw one out the window, and then they'd round the rest up and drag them outside, where the police were already waiting.

Sometimes Klaus would wake up in the night to a six-foot man, gun in hand, spitting curses at him, and sometimes he'd see masked women stalking up and down the street outside of the academy. It was terrifying, but that was usually the worst it would get.

Once, when they were fourteen, they were on a mission at the airport, and they messed up. There were more bad guys than they'd expected, and they weren't ready. Civilians died. Eventually Ben had to step in.

It was the first real slaughter after that first mission at the bank.

Klaus couldn't get a moment alone for days after that. Women would wait inside his room so that they could whisper threats to him at night. Men would scream at him over dinner. Once, they threatened to kill his siblings. They told him that they would let him watch, let him hear their screams as they cut them apart. It was breakfast time. Klaus burst into tears, and he lost meal privileges for a week for disruption.

That evening, while the rest of the kids were at dinner, Klaus rolled the first joint of his life. It fell apart in his hands.

There were a few other times. The night in the motel, when he'd manifested the assassins' victims. One night in Vietnam, when his usual dealer had been caught and sent home. He'd spent the whole night shaking under his covers, surrounded by his dead friends, his dead brothers. Dave was the only thing that kept him tethered.

Klaus isn't in a motel room anymore. He isn't gonna be rescued from this. And Dave isn't there to put a hand on his.

There are more dead than ever, and Klaus can't risk letting them through.

"I wonder if any weed survived the apocalypse," Klaus murmurs, tapping his fingers on his knees.

"The apocalypse happened, and all you can think about it getting high?" Five snaps, walking up behind him. Five has dragged a wooden cart across the ruins, and it's full ash-smeared cans.

Klaus laughs. "You don't change much, in your old age."

"The hell does that mean? Did you collect anything, or did you just sit here on your ass?"

"Yep, the same crabby old prick," Klaus mutters as he stands to inspect Five's stash. "Oh, some real delicacies in here. Spam?" He holds up the can.

Five wrinkles his nose. "Unfortunately."

"Yeah, that's off the table for me," Klaus says, tossing the can back into the cart.

"It's the end of the world, Klaus. Can't afford to be picky."

"But it'll offend my delicate taste," Klaus says, putting a hand to his chest in mock offence. He doesn't say the real reason. Spam is army food, and those memories are still too fragile to touch. Klaus feels like that a lot, lately. Fragile. Like his emotions are pressing out from inside him, and the barrier is wearing thinner and thinner each second. Even the smallest thing could break him.

"Well, tell your 'delicate taste' that it's either this or anchovies straight from the jar."

Five tosses the jar over to Klaus, and Klaus fumbles with it in the air, almost dropping it. "Hey!" Klaus cries, and Five ignores him.

There's a quiet whisper in the air, and Klaus turns to look. There's someone walking down the empty section where the road had been, looking at the ruined buildings. Klaus stares for a moment, then looks up at Five, who's staring in the same direction.

"Are you high?" Five asks cruelly. Clearly he can't see anyone, and Klaus feels cold dread take over him.

"No, no, I'm not, that's the problem," Klaus says, seeing Five's incredulous face but not bothering to explain. "Hey, did you happen to get any booze in that little cart of yours?"

"I'm not supporting your drug habit, Klaus."

"I've been sober for three days now! Let me let loose a little."

"Am I supposed to be impressed?"

"I'm damaged, Five. My family is dead. Nowhere to go, no one to turn to." He sighs. "What do you expect me to do?" Klaus lets his voice break on the last word, hamming it up.

"The apocalypse happened to me, too, moron."

"Fine, I'll get it myself." Five gives Klaus a disgusted look but doesn't say anything. Klaus hears him clattering the cans around as he walks away. "Prick," he adds under his breath.

Klaus climbs down over the rubble until he reaches the flat stretch that used to be the road. The ghost is far behind him and walking slowly, but it still takes all of Klaus's willpower not to break into a run.

A man crawls out of the door a little ways ahead of Klaus, clutching his head in both hands and moaning. Klaus feels a wave of nausea wash over him, and he can't tell if it's from fear or withdrawal. He scratches the back of his hand, gulping and trying his best to keep the meager contents of his stomach down.

The bar. Klaus and Five haven't travelled far from the theater, and the bar on that same street is still there—the one that Klaus found the bottle in just a few hours ago. (Has it really just been a few hours? The sun is setting now, albeit weakly, and the ruined landscape is bathed in golden evening light. Or not bathed, per se—too early in the morning for that. Light has been lazily brushed over the landscape, by somebody that just wants the job over as fast as possible. It doesn't quite fill the shadows, but at least it's better than the harsh light of earlier.)

Klaus squeezes his eyes shut and walks quickly toward the bar, trying not to think about the man, now lying curled up on the floor with his head still in his hands.

"Help," Klaus hears him moan, and he grits his teeth and opens his eyes. The man's wringing his hands, and his whole ugly face is in clear view. There's a tear across the side of his head and the blood has streamed out of his, covering his face and shoulders. It's stopped flowing, but it's everywhere.

"Oh, jeez," Klaus groans, looking away. "Oh, wow."

"What—what happened?" the man gasps, and Klaus has to dodge his hand as he reaches out to grab Klaus's ankle.

"Yeah, I'm sorry—I'm sorry," Klaus says, evading the man's grip once again. "I gotta, I gotta go."

"Please help me. My family, where's my family?" The man reaches out again, but this time he gets Klaus's foot in his bloodstained grip.

"Let go—let go of me!" Klaus cries, wrestling his foot away and stumbling backwards away from him. "Please, don't—" but the man pushes himself off the ground, standing and coming for Klaus.

"You alright down there?" It's Five's voice, and Klaus doesn't need to remind himself. Five can't see the man. Klaus is alone on this one, like usual.

"No!" Klaus yells anyway. Five opens his mouth, but the man grabs Klaus's hand and Klaus forgets about Five for a moment. He pulls his hand away, gagging at the slick feeling of the blood on the man's hand. "I'm sorry, just please, Christ, get away from me." He brushes at his hand, trying to get the feeling off. But the ghost blood stays. "God dammit!"

"Just help me, please," the man whines, and Klaus pushes him away. He crashes to the ground, and Klaus makes a wild break for it, panic making his heart thud and his feet clumsy.

The bar is close, so close. He turns, almost falling over, and rushes to the place beyond the dessicated mahogany bar. The pile of broken bottles that he'd found the flask in the night before. He roots through them, hands stinging from the sharp glass. He can hear someone walking up behind him and he knows somehow that it's someone dead, and his heart is pounding and thank god thank god the flask he'd found earlier isn't been the only one there, there is a full bottle of vodka, and he downs it, spilling only a little in his haste. Klaus doesn't turn around, doesn't face whoever's chasing him down, just squeezes his eyes shut and waits for the alcohol to kick in.

After a few seconds, the voices and footsteps stop.

Klaus collapses against the half-collapsed wall, shaky with relief. "Thank god," he mumbles.

A hand taps his shoulder, and he almost jumps out of his skin. He spins, hands coming up in a defensive stance, but it's just Five. He's looking up at him in obvious confusion. "Christ," Klaus gasps, putting a hand on his chest and leaning back on the counter, "don't sneak up on me like that!"

"I said your name six times," Five says, looking at him in disgust. Klaus supposes he must be quite a sight, hands covered in cuts, army vest wet with spilled vodka. There's the matter of the blood on his hands, too, but looking down, it's faded away. Maybe since it was part of a ghost, being sober made it disappear. "What did I say about drinking?" Five asks.

"Oh, did you say something? I'm sorry, my memory is just terrible—"

Five punches him in the arm.

"Hey, don't hit me, I'm delicate!"

"Don't be stupid. We can't survive this if you're intoxicated."

"Hey, who said anything about surviving? I thought we'd have a nice little party, lay down, and finally get a few minutes of peace. See, when I signed up to survive the apocalypse, I didn't expect it to be work."

"That too—how exactly did you survive? Everyone else here is dead—why are you any different?"

"I don't know, maybe someone up there—" Klaus gestures vaguely at the sky— "just really likes me. And I mean—who can blame them, am I right?"

"Maybe your head was so thick that the falling rocks didn't dent it."

"Ooh, maybe. Hey, what if I'm immortal? Wouldn't that be fun?"

Five grumbles something under his breath and stalks out towards the empty stretch of road.

"Hey, I heard that!" Klaus yells. He didn't hear it, but he sees Five clench his fists, which is gratifying enough. "Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Don't we still need to talk? I mean, what's the plan?"

Five spins around. "Are you going to be an adult?"

Wow. "How do you do that?"

"Do what?"

"The big, stern adult thing. I mean, I'm older than you, and I'm scared."

"Tell me about the apocalypse. What happened?"

"I don't know, what's there to tell? The apocalypse came, we didn't stop it. It's not that interesting of a story."

"How about I make it easy for you?" Five says, smiling condescendingly. Jesus, the kid is thirteen and he already acts like an old man.

Five reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out an eye, slick with blood.

"Oh, jesus," Klaus moans, looking away. "What the hell, Five?"

"Grow up." There it is again. The kid's been sixty years old ever since he was born. "See?" Five wipes some of the blood away with his sleeve. "Just a hunk of plastic. Useless, I thought. But guess where I found it."

Klaus's mouth falls open, and he scrambles to his feet. "That's it," he says under his breath, reaching out to touch it.

"The hell are you doing?" Five snaps, snatching it away. "Don't touch it—this thing could mean something. I'm starting to think that whoever owned it caused the apocalypse."

"Yeah, yeah, about that," Klaus murmurs, bringing a hand to his mouth. That eye. He'd never really made the connection before. "Give me a moment," he says, and then he takes off at a run toward the demolished Icarus theater.

"Hey!" Five yells, but Klaus doesn't answer. He stumbles to a stop at Leonard's body, making absolutely sure he doesn't look at the larger one a few feet away. He kneels down, and sure enough, one of Leonard's eyes is just a bloody mess. No white, no iris. Just blood and flesh. Klaus doesn't turn to look, but his mind jumps to Luther's outstretched hand, to his clawed, bloody fingers.

"Shit," Klaus mutters.

"Klaus!" he hears Five yell, and there's irritation in his voice. Klaus turns to see Five clambering over the wreckage towards the bar, looking furious. In his hand is the glass eye.

That's the eye. The one that brought Five back, that belonged to the person that caused the apocalypse. It was gone, Klaus supposes, smashed against the wall of the academy, but here it is again.

Klaus can't say anything for a moment as the sheer magnitude of this whole thing crashes down on him.

This little time loop is the end of the world, and it's all on Five—Klaus and Five now—to fix things. Five had already failed once. How many times would it take him to get it right? Maybe Klaus isn't supposed to tell Five anything—spoilers and all. But on the other hand, what if telling him what happens will help him stop it? What if this is the time that they get it right?

"What the hell are you doing?" Five snaps, climbing over a chunk of rock that had fallen across the doorway.

"That's the eye, isn't it?"

"What?"

"The eye that belonged to Le—to whoever caused the apocalypse."

"That's the theory, yeah. What does it have to do with him?"

"With who?" Klaus asks, looking around like he doesn't know what Five is talking about.

"With the guy that you were bending over, you moron. Who is he?"

"Well, no need to be rude about it." Five gives him a look, and Klaus takes a deep breath. "How about we go sit down, get comfortable, talk it out over a couple drinks? Y'know, pop a nice bottle of champagne, put on some jazz."

Five stares at Klaus for a moment, as if he's trying to decide whether or not it's worth calling him a moron for the fifth time that day. "Well, I suppose we have some time."

**So apparently you guys wanted more! I've got a couple ideas about how this is all going to play out, one of which is VERY angsty, once of which is not so much. I'm also thinking of switching up the pov every chapter from here on out, so it will definitely be less Klaus-focused from now on.**

**Anyway, thank you all so much for reading and for all of your lovely comments on the first part. Reviews give me life when coffee and tua edits can't, so please leave one if you enjoyed the chapter!**


	3. Five

Five would go to Vanya's room every time that things got especially bad. She was his safe place, his escape from the whole superhero shebang. It's not a romantic thing, obviously—they're siblings. Even if Luther and Allison would, Five wouldn't, and neither would Vanya. But she's probably his best friend in the house.

One night, Five goes to Vanya's room after dinner, during their half-hour of semi-freedom. The only time for "fun and games," as Reginald calls it, is on Saturdays from noon to half-past, but they do have certain times of day when it's almost possible to sneak out. After dinner and before lights out is one of those times, and Five has the perfect power to do it without getting caught. Besides, he needs to talk to someone.

There'd been an argument at dinner, again, between Five and Reginald, about the time traveling issue. They were cropping up more and more often lately—they'd had one last week, and Five knew that they would have one the next.

For ages, Five has been itching to use his new power, needing to do it. The need is like a physical thing, clawing and crawling around inside of him, and every time he's told he has to hold back it grates on him a little more. He feels almost like it's going to burst out of him one day if he doesn't let it out himself. Vanya's the only one that didn't hear the argument, since she hadn't showed up to dinner. Five isn't sure where she was, what she was doing, but he wants to tell the story to her. Get it out of him.

Vanya's curled up on her bed, smiling at something in her lap, but she jumps when she sees him. "Go away, Five."

"Vanya?" Five asks, walking over. "What's going on?"

"I can't talk right now," she says, curling in on herself even more.

"I won't tell Dad," Five says, because he thinks it's the right thing to say.

"You won't?" Vanya asks, lifting her head.

"Trust me, he's an asshole. Why would I help him?"

Vanya doesn't say anything as Five sits on the bed, just turns around a little and adjusts herself. She holds out her hands, and Five scoots back involuntarily.

There's a little, wet lump of feathers in her hands.

"I—what—what is it?"

"A baby crow. The cat got his mom. I'm all he has." Vanya is grinning brighter than he's ever seen, so he doesn't tell her she's insane.

"Do you—can you feed it? What does a crow eat?"

"Crickets. And beef kidney."

"Well, where the hell are you going to get crickets and beef kidney?" Vanya looks up at him, bring the crow a little closer to her chest, and he shakes his head and tries to correct himself. "Sorry. Habit. Where—how do you know that's what they eat?"

"I read it in a book," she says, nodding over at the open volume lying on her desk. It must have come from the library, although Five doesn't know why Reginald would own a book on baby crows.

"Are you sure you can feed it? Crickets aren't exactly gonna be too common in the city."

"It's a he. And I can. I will."

Five sighs, and then jumps when he hears footsteps coming down the hall towards the room. "Put it—him—in the closet or something. Quickly!" he whispers, hurrying out into the hall. He isn't supposed to be outside of his room, even though they technically have free time.

He runs right into Grace.

"Hi, dear. You're supposed to be in bed, aren't you?"

"I had to borrow a pen from Vanya, so I could do my homework. Mine broke." He grins innocently up at her, but she sees through it. Five doesn't know if it's part of her interface or if she's just developed intuition, but she can always see through their lies.

"Don't worry," Grace says, with her poster-ready smile, "I won't tell your father. Don't let it happen again, though." Five lets out a breath of relief. "Now, hurry on, now. Don't want someone else to catch you out and about."

"Good night, mom," he says, sparing one glance back at Vanya's door before walking off.

Over the next weeks, Five sneaks out almost daily in order to help get food for Vanya. He zaps out during their free time, before breakfast, after dinner. Sometimes he has to leave in the middle of the night, but it's worth it seeing Vanya so joyful. It turns out that there's a decent number of stores selling beef kidney in their neighborhood. Crickets, too.

One day, Vanya asks their Dad if she can play his violin. He says yes, and Five can hear her playing it shakily to the crow every night.

It's a month before he goes to Vanya's room, plastic bag clutched in hand, only to hear her quietly sobbing. Vanya doesn't tell him what happened, but he can tell.

They have a burial ceremony that Saturday in the backyard, just the two of them.

Now, Five sits on a chunk of rock, leaning forward and kneading his hands together, thinking. Klaus is draped across the ground on the other side of the makeshift fireplace they'd made.

They'd set up a little camp, a little ways off the side of the road. Five's cart of food is there, and Klaus has amassed a little collection of unbroken bottles. Besides that, they've assembled a little pile of loot—Klaus has two fur coats and a box of nail polish, and Five has six scavenged books. Everything is dusty and cracked, but intact nevertheless.

They'd found a couple of cans of chilli, but after putting them in a fire to heat up and realizing they didn't have a pair of tongs (or even an oven mitt), they'd had to leave the chilli there and eat something else. They'd settled on cold tortellini, straight out of the can.

"What happened?" Five asks when he finishes eating.

"See, this was specifically what I was talking about when I said your food would offend my delicate taste. Cold tortellini is not up to the standards I've come to expect."

"The apocalypse, Klaus—what happened?"

"I think I told you about the boyfriend that made _osso bucco. _Oh, that was fantastic. Actually, it wasn't you I told, was it? Yeah, no, it was the other one. The older one." Klaus laughs to himself, leaning his head back.

"Klaus, stop being an idiot. You keep talking about me, talking about some older version of me. What did I do?"

"What I would give for some of that _osso bucco _now. Oh, well." He sighs.

"Klaus, _tell me._"

Klaus groans, pushes himself into a sitting position. "I don't know, okay? Like I said—the apocalypse came, we tried to stop it, and we failed."

"What happened to the academy? Wasn't that the whole grand goal here? To save the world? You guys were supposed to be equipped for this."

Klaus pauses for a moment, fiddling with the hem of his jacket. "The academy fell apart," he says eventually.

"What?"

"About fifteen years ago, yeah. Right after Ben—"

"Right after Ben what?"

"Right after Ben. . ." Klaus forces the word out, "died. He died."

"What happened?" Five asks, and his voice is soft.

"I don't know, I wasn't even—I wasn't even there," Klaus says, and his voice breaks. "Apparently Luther—but I don't know. By the time they called me in, well, I could see Ben. But there were two of him."

It takes a moment for Five to grasp what Klaus means. "Oh," he says quietly.

"Yeah." There's a pause. "Y'know, as fun as this is—" Klaus says, pushing himself off the ground and making to walk off.

"Hey, no, wait. What happened after that? Why did you all leave?" Five leans forward, eyebrows knitting together. He feels a little thrill go through him. _This _is what he's made for, not survival. Detective work, figuring things out.

"I left first, actually. The next day. I'd had enough, I guess. So I don't actually know what the rest of them did." Klaus takes a long swig of whatever choice alcohol he's taking at the moment. "Sorry about that."

"But the next time you heard, they'd all left?"

"Yeah, all of them except Luther. Always the valiant hero, he was. He never even left, and it got him into a pretty, ah, a pretty hairy situation." Klaus laughs, sitting back down. "Also, Dad sent him to the moon. Four years. So there's that."

"What about the rest of them? Where did they go?"

"Well, Allison got famous. She was Annie, on Broadway. A little old for the role, but she got by. I wanted to watch it, but," he shrugged, "no money.

"It was hollywood next. I think I saw one of her movies. With a wheelchair, and a court scene. Don't remember much; I was probably drunk, knowing me."

"What about Diego?"

"Oh, he kept on with the superhero life, just not in the academy. Got a full-body leather outfit, kept his domino mask. He always did have a flair for the dramatics, our Diego. Not like Vanya. I'm pretty sure she joined an orchestra, but I didn't see any of her shows. Not until the last one." Klaus laughs one _ha, _quietly.

"Why do you say it like that? _The last one?"_

"Yeah, um. That's not—that's not really—are you done with your tortellini? I can wash up."

"Stop being an idiot, Klaus. What happened at Vanya's concert? Does it have anything to do with this?"

Klaus sighs, and Five resists the urge to snap at him again. Of all the siblings for him to end up with after the apocalypse, of course it's Klaus that he gets. And Klaus is exactly the same as the Klaus Five knew—brash, immature, sloppy.

"Fun little dee-_tail_," Klaus says after a moment, "I think that Vanya might've caused the apocalypse."

Klaus has to be mistaken. "That's insane. What the hell does that mean?"

"I don't know, all right? I told you. There was some sort of. . .energy, or something. Coming out of her. I don't know."

"Stop saying you don't know, Klaus. You were there, and you're the only source of information I've got."

Klaus sighs. "That week was...a mess, Five." Five glares at him. "Fiiiiiiiine. A week before the apocalypse, Dad died. At least, I think it was a week. It got extended just a tad for me, and living in another timeline for ten months tends to mess up your senses," Klaus says, laughing, and Five throws the empty can at him. He yelps.

"Did I say stop being an idiot? I understand it's hard for you, but try to tell the story like a functioning human being."

When Klaus starts again, there are tears in his eyes, and Five braces himself for what he's about to hear. "Vanya wrote a book, a ways back. Basically outing us on all the shit we—and Dad, for that matter, I suppose—pulled when we were little. She explained how she was oh-so-lonely her whole life, how we all ostracized her. She complained about dear old Dad's regime, about his punishments, blah, blah, blah, all stuff we know already.

"Five terrible years passed—not terrible because we weren't speaking to Vanya, because we hadn't really been speaking to Vanya for ten years anyway. We hadn't been speaking to each other at all. They were terrible just because. . .I don't know. Things were normal, let's just say that. And then, five years later, Dad," Klaus pauses, wipes his eyes, "died. Killed himself, yeah. He made it up into this big murder mystery thing, trying to get us to band together or whatever usual bullshit. He wanted us to stop the apocalypse."

At this point Klaus goes silent for a moment, gulping, and Five presses him. "What happened then?"

"Well, then you—you turned up. Said you'd been in the apocalypse for forty-five years, and that we needed to stop it. I mean, you didn't say all of that up front, you sure didn't get any more straightforward in your old age, but you told us eventually."

Five takes a second to grasp this, that he stays here for so many years, that he goes back. Tries to stop it. It's all too much to take in.

Klaus continues. "You were being chased by something—something called the Commission, I think? Assassins, and they were after you because you were trying to change the timeline. They took me—but that's not, that's not important. They um—"

"We can figure that out later. Where does Vanya fit into all of this?"

"I really don't know, Five. She showed up the day before the apocalypse with this guy, and none of us knew who he was. Except that Allison had done some research on him, and she thought that he was actually Harold Jenkins, not whoever Vanya thought he was. And we don't know what Harold Jenkins did, but it was bad. He served jail time.

"Anyway, Vanya had a concert the night that the apocalypse was supposed to happen. We weren't going to go, not because we don't love her, just because there were some _slightly _more pressing things to deal with. But then Luther comes barging into the house in all of his...large, ape-like glory, saying that 'Vanya has powers.' '_Oh, Luther, could you maybe _explain _a tad bit more?' 'No, Klaus. Didn't I tell you to get out of the van?' 'Oh, _now _you don't want my help?'"_

"Klaus."

"Yeah, so, then, uh, we went to the concert hall. And Vanya, she," Klaus's voice slows, like it's being dragged down, "she was. I'm not really sure what she was. Something was wrong—her eyes were all white-y and creepy. I think there was some sort of energy coming out of her."

"At her concert?"

"Yeah."

"She's been successful with the violin?" Five asks. It's not the point, but he can't seem to connect the two versions of Vanya in his head. He can't connect the girl who would risk punishment to take care of a baby crow with someone who would want to destroy the world. He can't.

And also, he's happy for her.

Klaus looks at him and smiles sadly. "Yeah, really successful. I wish—I wish I'd gone to see her shows."

"I'm sure she was great."

"Yeah. At that one concert, she was. Although I didn't listen too hard; I was a tad bit preoccupied."

"What makes you think she did it? I mean, couldn't it have been something else? I mean, you're..."

"High?"

"Yeah, high, most of the time."

"Sober. For two days. I told you," Klaus says, but his voice doesn't have any of the laughter that it did earlier. Instead it just sounds resigned. "I wish I wasn't.

"You're sure she did it?"

"There was definitely some sort of energy. I mean, I can't explain it, but I saw it. Her suit changed color, and there was blue light everywhere. And the theater was shaking.

"The people in the orchestra tried to run, but she swung her bow and something happened, I don't know. It looked like she attacked them."

"Jesus."

"Yeah."

There's a pause, and then Five says, "Klaus, we need to stop this."

"What?"

"If there's a way that we can go back and stop it from happening, we need to do it."

"I mean, obviously, yeah, but how? I mean, your. . .zappy thing, it's not working, right? And how else can we time travel?"

"I don't know, but we can figure that out later. If you're right about all of this, then Vanya tried to destroy the world. And that's. . .that's not the Vanya that I knew, back home. Something must have happened. Maybe we can stop that thing from happening, Klaus. Maybe we can figure out how to stop the apocalypse."

There's a silence, and then Klaus says, "It's getting dark. Don't you have a bedtime? You're a kid, right?"

"Don't be ridiculous," Five snaps, eager to have something to grab onto. He feels like the ground's been yanked out from under him. "And I'm not tired."

"Oh, I changed my mind, you're very mature. Well, _I'm _tired, even if his highness isn't, so let's continue this conversation in the morning, _bitte._"

"Fine," Five says, because he doesn't want to talk about it anymore, at least not really. One side of himself is desperate to know the whole story, especially the Harold Jenkins part of it, and the other is terrified to. He lets the latter win, and it makes him feel like a coward. But he doesn't want to think of Vanya as a villain, not yet.

It only takes Klaus a moment after curling up under his coat to quiet down, even if it does seem like he's resting fitfully.

For Five it takes a while longer.

There's something here that doesn't add up. This Harold Jenkins guy, for instance. Where did he come from? And what did he do to Vanya? It must have been something, because Five knows that there's no way Vanya would have willingly destroyed the world. Why would she have done it? He _knows _she didn't_._

But does he?

It's morning when Five hears the talking. He'd woken up early and gone to search the nearby buildings for more food, and he's just climbing up to the camp when the voices float over the rocks..

He's not sure if it's his imagination, at first—he'd hardly gotten enough sleep. (He's never drank coffee—their dad hated it—but he supposes that this would be an appropriate time to try some, if he could.) Klaus had woken him in the middle of the night crying out, scratching at his own face and holding up his hands as if defending himself from invisible attackers.

"Klaus," Five had said blearily. Klaus hadn't answered. "Klaus!"

Klaus's eyes opened with a start, and his hands stilled. He sat there for a moment, panting, and then rolled over and grabbed a bottle off their pile of supplies. Only after downing it did he lay back again, sighing. "That's nice," he murmured, and Five hadn't responded.

Now he can hear Klaus speaking again, but it's not the frenzied cries of the night before. He seems. . .sane. Put together, even, if not for the fact that he's replying to nothing.

"...you show up after all this time?" Klaus is saying, staring at an empty patch of air.

"...Klaus?" Five asks tentatively, keeping his distance.

"Why is everyone attacking me? Aren't I suffering enough already?" Klaus says, not to Five.

"Klaus!" Five snaps, and Klaus starts.

"Oh, hey, Five, good morning," Klaus says, casually.

"Who's the friend?"

"Oh, yeah," Klaus says, laughing, "you guys haven't met yet."

"Excuse me?"

"Five, this," Klaus gestures toward an empty area to his right, "is Ben, your brother."

"_What?"_


	4. Ben

"You are now dismissed for recess," Reginald says curtly, and the siblings scatter.

Ben is fifteen and following Klaus down the hall when he hears Reginald clear his throat behind him.

"Not you, Number Six. I want to have a conversation with you."

Ben casts a terrified look at Klaus, and Klaus widens his eyes. What could he want to talk to Ben about? Ben had been careful, over the years, to never speak up, never step out of line. He was as eager to get out as the rest of them, but arguing just meant punishments. And as soon as they turned eighteen, they could legally escape anyway. There's no reason to stir things up until then.

So what does their father want?

Maybe it's about Ben's powers. He'd been willing—not enthusiastic, but willing at least—to use them in the past. He's not sure where the tentacles come from or whether or not he's even a human, really, but at least he used to be able to control them. He decided whether or not they were released, told them what to do. And when they weren't on a mission, they stayed in. When he got dressed in the morning, he was like a normal person. His stomach was just skin, just like normal. Just like anybody else.

Sometimes he'd stand in front of the mirror and wonder if maybe his stomach wasn't the only thing hiding a monster. What if the rest of him erupted one day too?

But even though the tentacles were terrifying, they were his. They just felt like another arm—under control, even part of him.

Lately, that hadn't been the case. Lately, the tentacles felt like an actual other monster, like it's not him controlling them but vice versa.

During one mission, a few months ago, Luther ordered him to release the Horror. He did, and it killed the bad guys, like usual. But after, when he normally pulled them in and closed his jacket, they wouldn't come. The monster wouldn't retreat.

The pain, the literal pain, was unlike anything Ben had ever experienced. It had felt like his skin was boiling, like he was being torn inside out. For minutes, he could see, couldn't hear, couldn't think. All he knew was that the monster had turned on him.

Civilians died. In the end, Luther had to sedate him. Ben hadn't used his powers since.

"Come with me," Reginald says, and starts walking briskly toward his study. Ben almost has to jog to keep up with him. He does it silently.

"It has come to my attention, Number Six, that you have not released the horror in three months."

"I—" Ben says, but Reginald cuts him off.

"Let me finish, Number Six. During those six months, we have been on seven separate missions, and yet you have not used your powers once. Do you have an explanation for this?"

"Dad—"

"I have told you not to call me that."

"Sir," Ben corrects, even though it takes a certain amount of willpower to get the word out, "I can't control my powers anymore. I don't think it's safe for me to be using them if I don't know that I can be safe."

"Come," Reginald says, pushing open the study door. "Sit," he says, and Ben does. "Let me explain something to you, Number Six."

Ben wants to speak up, but he doesn't. Staying quiet is the best strategy with their Dad.

"Do you see this?" Reginald asks, gesturing to the clockwork chimpanzee sitting on his desk.

"Yes, Dad—sir."

"This ape is the Umbrella Academy, and each of you are one of its parts. Every one of you is like a piece of metal, all working together to accomplish one goal. Without one of those pieces," he unscrews a nail from the leg, and the chimpanzee collapses with a crash, "you can accomplish nothing."

"But—"

"The goal of this academy is to be an effective crime-fighting system. You know this, Number Six. None of you can accomplish this goal unless you work together properly. And to work together properly you must each play your part."

"Yes, sir," Ben says quietly, resigned.

"You are dismissed," Reginald says curtly, and opens his journal. Ben knows he isn't gonna get any more acknowledgement than that, and he leaves without saying another word.

The next mission, Ben tries his best. He can't bring himself to unleash the horror, but he uses his fists, uses whatever makeshift weapons he can. He fights, takes down bad guys, saves his siblings. They'd been trained in normal combat, after all. Just because Ben can't unleash the Horror doesn't mean he can't help.

Those next months are the golden times for the Umbrella Academy. The public finally knows who they are and the people love them. There are missions multiple times a week. Fans gather outside the academy on their birthday with signs and cards. Teenage girls run up to Ben and ask him for his autograph. Boys, too. Everyone wants to be part of the Umbrella Academy, to meet the six super-children. Luther gets a love letter in the mail, once, and Klaus reads it aloud, dramatically, in the living room. Allison stews, Diego and Ben laugh, and Luther hides his face.

It's only after when everything falls apart.

Thirteen years and an apocalypse later, Ben sits on the dusty ground in Klaus and Five's campsite.

The apocalypse had been bad for all of them, obviously, but the days leading up to it might have been even worse. Diego was arrested, and Allison spent all night at the police station trying to get him out. The two of them only ended up showing up the next morning, refusing to say how he'd escaped. They found the address of Harold Jenkin's grandmother's cabin, payed it a visit that night. It was completely empty. The next day, they'd visited Jenkin's own house. Still, empty. They went on a wild goose chase all around the city, trying to find him and Vanya, and had been meeting in the Academy itself when Luther burst through the doors with the news about Vanya's powers.

The worst thing of that week leading up to the apocalypse was seeing Vanya at the concert. Seeing her standing on stage, that cold, determined look in her eyes. She didn't look at all like the Vanya Ben knew.

Ben hadn't been good friends with Vanya, as a kid, but he felt like he knew her. He knew that she was quiet, and that she loved the color blue. That she felt best when she felt needed, and that she would name each of her teddy bears something different. She collected them when she was little, back when Reginald would indulge them slightly more. He knew that she hated corn, but that cornbread was her favorite food. Ben knew Vanya, and he knew that the woman he'd seen on the stage in the Icarus Theater wasn't her. And if she'd changed somehow, then it had to be undoable.

If there was anything Ben could do to undo it, he would.

"Shit," Five exclaims. He's crouched in the dirt in front of Klaus, making an attempt at painting his nails.

"Hey, hey, careful there! I need to be presentable," Klaus says.

"Remind me why you can't do this yourself."

"C'mon, stop being so boring. We're bonding! This is fun, right? Ben?" Klaus looks over at Ben, who shakes his head. Five's had to remove an re-apply the nail polish more times than Ben can count, and Ben is tired of hearing the kid curse.

"Can we eat? It was time for lunch two hours ago," Ben says. He doesn't technically get hungry, but Klaus needs reminding.

Sometimes Ben feels like the only reason he exists at this point is to help Klaus, and there are times when grates on him. Well, it always grates on him, but he usually pushes the feeling of discontentment away..

"Am I the only one enjoying this?" Klaus cries, and Ben and Five both look at him, deadpan. "You know what? Fine! This is the last time I decide to try and pass the time with something productive."

"I fail to see how painting your nails is productive," Five says, screwing the little bottles shut. Ben had woken up to this, and he isn't sure exactly where they'd gotten the nail polish from. Or the rest of the stuff, for that matter. Klaus has somehow amassed a sizable stash of alcohol, several coats, three dresses, and four pairs of pants, one of which is bright purple. He's wearing a garish floral shirt and a pair of shimmery pink pants, neither of which Ben has ever seen before. And then there's the nail polish and two little baggies of makeup. Five, too, has about twenty books and a little pile of markers.

"I told you, I need to be presentable."

"The world ended. Presentable to who, exactly?"

"Oh, boo hoo, so our brothers and sisters are dead. Doesn't mean that I don't want to be pretty."

"This is ridiculous," Five says, turning and walking off. Klaus doesn't ask where he's going.

Over the past two days, Klaus and Five (although mostly Five, let's be honest here) have been going on little scouting trips throughout the city. The goal is to check for survivors, supplies, or shelter. There haven't been any storms, but they've seen clouds gathering on the horizon a couple of times, and they don't want to get caught out in the open. So far, all building have been destroyed and all bunkers are locked, but at least Klaus gets his clothes, apparently.

Klaus shuts the little nail polish box, bringing a bottle of brandy to his mouth.

"Klaus, no," Ben says, and Klaus looks over at him. The odds are already stacked against them—an emotionally stunted junkie and a thirteen-year old boy, alone after the apocalypse. It doesn't help that Klaus is falling back onto his drug habit.

"Excuse me?" Klaus asks. Ben's held back over the past couple of days, not saying a thing about Klaus's drinking, so Klaus must not be expecting this.

"You were sober for three days, Klaus. That was a big accomplishment. Don't fall back on this."

"Oh, shut up. You sound like Luther," Klaus says, scoffing and bringing the bottle back up to his lips.

"Come on, Klaus. You know what you have to do. Why are you running away from it?"

"What the hell is that supposed to mean? What do you mean, I know what I have to do? Everyone's dead, Ben. There isn't any coming back from this."

"You can stop it. You can go back. I know you and Five have been talking about it, so why don't you do it?"

"Do what?" Klaus is being stubborn, pretending he doesn't know what's going on. Ben can tell, Ben can always tell. Again, he reminds himself that there's a reason he sticks by Klaus, out of all the places he goes. Klaus needs him.

"We need the full force of the academy to accomplish anything. Isn't that what Dad always said?"

"Oh, yeah, Dad. When did we start trusting him? He was an asshole."

"Maybe just this once he was right. If you get all of us together, we can find a way to go back. To stop this all from happening. We used to work together, remember?"

"Why is this on me?"

"Because of your power, Klaus. You can manifest them."

There's a brief pause. "Why can't I have a break?"

"Because everyone died! Seven billion people died, Klaus. And you can stop it from ever happening. You have that ability, so why don't you do it?"

"I have time! Let me relax a little."

"But this is what you have to do, Klaus. It's your responsibility!"

"It's always my responsibility! It's always _You aren't reaching the best of your ability, _or _you've disappointed me again, Klaus. _It's not like they're getting any deader, so let me take a moment."

"But it _is _your responsibility, Klaus. And even if you don't want to use your powers, at least be sober. For Five."

"Yeah, yeah, speaking of Five. Why isn't this his responsibility? Why isn't this on him?"

"Because Five is a _child, _Klaus. He's thirteen. And I know you don't realize that, because he looks the same as he did back home, before the apocalypse, but he's a _kid, _and you have him doing everything while you sit here and wallow."

Klaus shuts his eyes for a moment, and Ben holds his breath. When Klaus opens his eyes, they're wet, and he says, "You're right, you're right. I'm sorry, I'm just—exhausted. The end of the world, and all. You know."

"Just be an adult. Take some of the responsibilities. Maybe go scouting a little, instead of just letting Five do it, for once."

Klaus nods slowly, and then takes a swig of whisky. Ben opens his mouth, and then closes it.

Klaus had nodded. That's progress.

* * *

"I found something today that might help," Five says, tossing a book onto the ground that night. They're eating dinner around their little makeshift campfire—cold chilli.

Ben isn't eating, half because _cold chilli _and have because, well, death. His hands aren't exactly material. Neither is his stomach.

"Help with what?" Klaus asks around a mouthful of food.

"Stopping the apocalypse, dipshit."

"See? He's doing something," Ben says, looking pointedly at Klaus. Klaus ignores him, as per usual.

"Wow, we're really progressing here. First moron, now dipshit. I'm proud of you, brother," says Klaus.

"It's Vanya's book. I don't know if you ever read it, but it's pretty ballsy, the things she says. And I think it can help us."

"Oh, I know, I read it. It was hilarious. I'm only offended that I wasn't in it more."

"You should be glad you weren't worse to her. You should have seen the stuff she said about Dad. Not to mention Diego."

"How can this help to stop the apocalypse, though? I mean, it's not like she wrote about her powers."

"Yeah, but can't you see?" Five's voice is picking up in pace now, and Ben can tell that he's getting excited. "A lifetime of being pushed aside, of being ostracized by her own family. Maybe that's what did it. Maybe she just snapped."

"Yeah, but what did Jenkins have to do with it, then? There has to be more factors," Klaus says.

"Then tell me. Explain to me exactly what happened leading up to the apocalypse. Spare no detail."

"I've already told you everything."

"That can't be everything. You said that Luther knew she had powers. How?"

Klaus looks at Five, and there's a quiet pain in his eyes that Ben has seen before. "I don't—I don't know, I'm sorry. They don't tell me anything, least of all Luther."

"So talk to them! You have your powers, you can do it."

Klaus shuts his eyes, shaking his head, and Ben scoots closer, reaching to put a hand on Klaus's shoulder and only realizing at the last second that it's impossible.

"Klaus—"

"Go away, Ben," Klaus moans, flapping at him like he's a fly.

Ben takes a breath. He's seen Klaus broken in every way. He's seen him vomiting in an alley, crying in the back of a bus, laughing giddily and letting himself be pulled into a dark corner by the fifth man of the week. But what Ben's asking Klaus to do might break him worse than ever before. "Klaus, you can do this." Klaus looks at him, eyes wet. "It's gonna be hard—"

"Oh, gee, that makes me feel better."

"It's gonna be hard, but you have to. You know you do."

"Oh, god," Klaus moans, looking upwards and hastily wiping his eyes. "Okay. Okay." He turns to Five, who's gone quiet. "I'll do it, I'll do it."

"You sure you can handle it?" Five asks warily, but Ben knows that there's genuine concern there. For Klaus, not just for their plan.

"Yeah," Klaus says, wiping his tears away and rubbing his hands together. "Oh, yeah, easy-peasy. Let's go for it."

Five grins. "We'll start planning in the morning."

* * *

Early the next morning, early enough for it to reasonably be called night, Ben wakes to find Klaus standing a couple hundred feet away, standing on the top of a rocky hill. He's emptied Five's cart of food and filled it with his alcohol stash. One by one, the bottles go crashing onto the rocks two hundred feet below.

He's crying, quietly.

"You made the right decision, Klaus," Ben says softly, and Klaus jumps.

"Yeah, I know," he says, not bothering to hide the tears from Ben. "I know."

"You know this is good for you, right? You need to face them. Your powers."

"Yeah, yeah. I told you, I'm great. I'm gonna do great." Klaus grins as he says it, but Ben knows he's lying.

He doesn't say anything else as they stand there, clothes ruffled by the wind. The only sounds are the Klaus's quiet sobs and the distant breaking of glass.

**thank you all so much for reading!**

**next week's chapter is a Luther pov, which is...controversial and difficult to write. i want to say now that i'm never one to hate characters - everything they do is part of the story, and all characters make bad decisions. and i did think Luther made a lot of bad decisions during the show, but they made sense, and everyone else made bad decisions too. The difference for me is that Klaus and Five's bad decisions (since they seem to be the fandom favorites) are much more relatable and "uwu poor baby" than Luther's, which just appear downright cruel. so anyway. i definitely don't hate him, but I do think he made mistakes, and i'm going to write him making mistakes, just like I would Five or Klaus (discluding Ben because we all know he's perfection).**

**TL;DR: don't hate him, don't love him, and my writing him making mistakes isn't me attempting to punish or bash him, it's just me writing him as a character. i would do the same for Five or Klaus.**

**(side not: i've edited the tags to include everything that's going to happen in the rest of the story, since they originally only included stuff from that first chapter, which was meant to be a one shot).**

**aaanywayyyyyy. thank you so much for reading! (and for reading this minor monolith of a note, if you did.) comments give me life when coffee and the souls of the innocent can't, so please leave one if you enjoyed the chapter!**


	5. Luther

"What do you think is in Dad's book?" Ben asks one day. They're all lounging around in the living room, waiting for their break to be over. It's rare for the children not to have something to do, but today is one of those slow days. Diego's the only one that isn't present. He's probably out in the courtyard, training. Luther's itching to train, too, because he doesn't want to fall behind, but it's uncomfortable to excuse himself at this point.

"Love letters to a past beau? Maybe criticisms of us—he never seems to run out of those," Klaus says from his spot sprawled across the sofa. He's on his stomach, and he looks about as undignified as possible, as usual.

"If he wanted us to know, he would tell us," Luther says indignantly.

Five scoffs. "It's just observations of us. Stuff from the security tapes."

"How do you know?" Allison asks.

"I checked," Five says curtly.

"You broke into Dad's study?" Luther asks, incredulous.

"It's not so shocking. I just jumped in and out."

"Wow, I'm gaining a new respect for you today, brother," Klaus says.

"Well, I'm grateful," Five says, smiling sweetly in that not-so-sweet way. Klaus blows a kiss back to him.

"What do you mean, observations? What does it say?" Allison asks, leaning forward.

Luther can't believe this. "What, so you all are okay with this?"

"He takes notes, from the security footage. On our sleeping habits, our comings and goings. It's not shocking news," Five says, not even looking at Luther, who huffs.

Luther would be lying if he said he wasn't curious about that journal, though. What's in it? What does it say about him? What did does it say about Diego? He hates to admit it, but he wants desperately to be better than his brother, and getting his hands on that journal might show him whether he is or not.

Eighteen years later, the journal is still a mystery. But it's the farthest thing from Luther's mind when he feels himself torn away from his world and shoved into the next.

It's like this—one second Luther is in his old room at the academy, and the next he's ripped out from reality and laying down on the dusty ground of what looks like a wasteland. And it really feels like he's been ripped—like something hooked onto his insides and pulled him through some barrier that he hadn't known existed.

And now he's in a wasteland. At first it looks like a crowded desert, but then things come into focus and he realizes that it's less a desert and more something from a post-apocalyptic movie, except that there are people everywhere. They're crawling, walking, just standing and staring into the distance. Someone's yelling. Does Luther know that voice?

He does. He looks down and Klaus is curled up on the ground, covering his ears.

"Klaus—" Luther sputters, leaping up and stepping toward Klaus's huddled form.

"Just shut up! Shut uuuuuup," Klaus groans, holding his head. Is he high?

"Klaus, what the hell—"

"Klaus, did it work? Are they here?" And now Luther turns around to see Five, muddied and roughed, looking around but not at him.

"Five, tell me—"

"Luther, give him some space," another voice says, and there's...someone on the other side of Klaus. Luther can't tell if it's his muddied thoughts or the panic or genuine confusion, but he can't recognize him. He's a man, about Luther's age. And he's holding a hand up.

Luther feels a tug of pain in his chest. He doesn't know why.

"Let him get control over this," the man says.

"What—" Luther sputters again, but he steps back, into the crowd of people. Everyone's wailing and clutching various wounds, and he can't make out any faces.

Is this it? Are these the survivors of the apocalypse?

For several days, it had been quiet. Luther had been in the bedroom of his academy again, and he could hear the laughter of his siblings in the other rooms. He felt at peace for the first time since they were seventeen.

This was where he belonged.

That blissful, (eerie, now that he was thinking about it) peace didn't lift until now. And boy, is it gone now.

Had he been he unconscious? What's happening?

It's all clamor and chaos and noise for a moment. Victims screaming, Klaus yelling, Five and the unrecognizable man both shouting orders. "Hey, get back!" "Quiet down, could you?"

It's a moment before Luther is present enough to rush forward and join them. "Hey, stay calm," he says, holding up his hands in a stay back gesture to the people crowding Klaus. They rush forward and he blocks them with his body, hardly feeling it when they kick and punch at him.

"What are you feeling?" Five asks when Klaus cries out.

"Go away, Five," Klaus says, batting him away.

"Just make them go away, Klaus. You can do it. You know how," the man says, and Luther risks a glance back at them. There are tears running down Klaus's face, but he's staring at his clenched fists with a look of determination.

What the hell?

It's only a few more seconds of pandemonium before everyone disappears. Just vanishes into thin air. When they dematerialize under him he's thrown forward.

"What the hell?" Luther murmurs, looking around.

He freezes.

He'd been wrong in thinking at first that everyone had disappeared. Five's still here, and Klaus and the man crouching over him too. Diego's standing several feet away—Luther hadn't even seen him in the crowd, but it seems he'd been here all along. He's standing cautiously—one hand on a knife, eyes moving quickly over the scene. And Allison is standing behind him.

"Allison," Luther says, stepping forward.

"Luther," Allison says, confusion all over her face, but her eyes are on Klaus. "Hi, I—"

Klaus cries out, and she rushes forward.

"Don't touch him," the man says, holding up a hand.

"Ben?" Allison asks. Luther feels a shock of emotion.

That's who it is. Luther hadn't seen him since…

He hardly looks different. Still so young.

"He's trying something out, give him some space," Ben says, but he's looking up at all of them in complete awe, and what looks like joy.

"Ben, how are you—" Allison asks, and then rushes forward. Ben jumps up and they embrace. There's a pause, and then Luther steps forward to join. Diego, too. They all hold Ben tight, and when they step away, there are tears in Ben's eyes. He's grinning like a fool. Allison laughs, and Diego smiles. "How are you alive?" Allison finishes.

Ben's face falls. "I'm...not."

"Okay, wait—wait a second. Can someone explain to me what's going on?" Luther sputters, completely unable to wrap his head around everything he's just seen. Hundreds of civilians, injured and now gone. Ben on the ground, completely alive. And Five is sitting on a rock a few feet away, kneading his hands and not paying attention to a thing any of them are saying. Which is normal, Luther supposes, but doesn't make much sense after all of this chaos. "And what happened to this place? Why is it all destroyed?"

Klaus uncurls himself finally and rubs his hands over his face. He seems to be the only one not confused.

"Klaus, what the hell is going on?"

"Well, that's a real funny story…"

* * *

They're sitting in a circle now, Five just a little outside and scribbling in what looks like Vanya's book. Luther can't imagine where he got it, but he can't understand a lot of things right now. It feels like his brain is working slower than usual, trudging through the muddy terrain of all of this new information.

"Wait, Klaus, I don't—so we all—we all died. But then where are our bodies?" Luther asks. He can't wrap his head around this whole dead thing. He was in his room in the Academy, for god's sake. Luther's not an idiot, he didn't think that there would be pearly gates and angels playing harps, but he can't believe that that was it. Just a room in the academy. He assumes that that's where everyone else had gone, too. So is that what it is—heaven? Just your childhood bedroom?

"Oh, they're just over yonder," Klaus says, waving his hand in a direction over the siblings' heads. "I wouldn't look at them, though. Kinda grisly, if you ask me."

"Yeah, I think I'll pass," Allison says. She looks as shocked as Luther.

Luther hasn't had a chance to talk to Allison since this whole mess started. They'd fought just before the concert, and he isn't sure what he would say anyway. She'd wanted to go in and talk to Vanya, reason with her, but after learning about her powers, Luther didn't trusted Vanya. He's increasingly glad that Allison went to the police station after Diego was arrested to reason with the authorities instead of searching for Vanya that night, like they'd planned. She might have ended up injured, or worse.

"So let me get this straight," Diego says, pointing his blade at Five, "the kid is thirteen. Actually thirteen, not like the one we had in our timeline."

"Right, yeah," Klaus says, nodding fast.

"Have you talked to him about this?" Allison asks. "I mean, is he okay? He's been torn away from his family at so young—I can't imagine what this would do to Claire if she was in his place."

"He's the same snappish bastard that he was for us, just slightly less of a jaded old man vibe. Only slightly. Mind you, if he hadn't told me he was thirteen, I wouldn't have been able to tell the difference."

"Klaus and Five have a plan," Ben says, sounding a little bit exasperated. Luther misses that exasperation. God, he'd missed Ben. He hadn't been close to many of the siblings other than Allison, but Ben had been friends with all of them. He'd been what held them together. It made sense that it was only after Ben died that the academy fell apart.

"Oh, yeah, the plan. See, that's where you all come in. Five wants to stop the apocalypse—we, we want to go back. And stop the apocalypse."

"How? What could we possibly do?" Luther asks.

"Vanya caused it, right?" Diego asks, still turning his knife over in his hands. "If we could figure out why, we could go back and stop it."

"We know why she did it. We were assholes to her for her entire life," Allison says irritatedly.

"Okay, okay, wait," Luther says, holding up his hands. "She was clearly—there was clearly something wrong with her. Wrong with her head. That's not the sort of thing that we can go back and fix."

The look Allison gives him makes him wish almost that he hadn't said anything at all. "How could you say that? This was our fault, Luther, not hers. It's because of how we treated her."

She opens her mouth to say more, but Ben interrupts. "Klaus thinks that there may have been more factors, and I think he's right," he says. "We think that Harold Jenkins might have had something to do with it."

"Okay," Luther says, eager to get Allison to stop glaring at him, "but how do we know what he said? We can't learn anything about him—everything's destroyed." Luther looks around at them all, waiting for an answer, but there isn't one. Allison's got her arms crossed, and she's not looking at him. Diego's chewing on his lip, examining his knife. Ben is watching them all carefully, and Klaus doesn't seem to know what to say.

Five chooses this moment to walk over. "So, what's the consensus?" Five asks Klaus. Luther knows that Five can't hear any of them, but it still grates on him that Five is acting like he can't hear anything Luther had said. Even though he can't.

This is all way too complicated.

Klaus claps his hands together. "They're up for it!"

"Great," Five says, grinning. Luther and Five were never close as children, but he recognizes that smile from the Academy. There's an innocence to it that's completely invisible in the sixty-year old assassin. "Any information about Vanya?"

"What'd'ya say, guys?" Klaus asks, looking around, and Luther can't get used to the idea of Klaus leading them. Well, sort of leading them. "Any info about our dear psycho little sister?" Luther glances at Allison, who tenses but says nothing.

"Pogo said her powers were based on sound, that she translated the audio into energy, or something," Luther says, and Klaus repeats it to Five.

"Do we know anything more than that?" Allison asks.

"I don't..."

"Oh, perfect," Diego says, rolling his eyes, and Luther bristles.

"Do you have anything better?"

"What, you didn't think to ask for details?"

"The apocalypse was coming, Diego, I didn't have time—"

"Luther didn't have time to ask for details about Vanya," Klaus whispers to Five.

"You don't have to tell me every detail," Five says exasperatedly, and Luther tries to ignore them.

"Yeah? Or maybe you were too busy getting high!" Diego says.

"Oh, they're fighting, now," Klaus says to Five. "This is fun."

"Okay—" Allison says, holding up her hands in a don't fight gesture.

"Guys—" Ben says at the same time. Luther ignores both of them.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Luther asks.

"Klaus said back in the academy that you got laid, that you were crazy high at the time. Or did you forget? You know, they say marijuana is terrible for your memory—"

"Diego says—oh no," Klaus whispers, and then quiets down. Luther is grateful.

"Shut up, Diego."

"Or what, huh? What's the story, Luther? What were you doing while the rest of us were fighting the apocalypse?"

"Hey, guys, this isn't really the most productive use of our time—" Klaus says, and for once Luther agrees with him.

"Klaus is right, we have to get back to the plan," he says gruffly, glancing at Allison. She's giving him a what the fuck? look.

Luther looks around, opening and closing his mouth, but it doesn't seem like anyone else is going to stand up for him, or make any attempt to get back on track. Ben's eyes are strangely cold, and Klaus is chewing on his lip, looking back and forth between Luther and Diego with wide eyes.

"I was," Luther gulps, "I was at a rave."

"Wow, Luther. Very good leadership there."

"I—" Luther says, looking at Allison.

"Really, Luther?" she asks, shaking her head.

"You have to understand—"

"Oh, here's the excuse," Diego says, and Luther clenches his fist.

"Whoa, there," Klaus cries, seeing the clenched fist. "Calm down, guys, come on."

"No, tell us, Luther."

"I was—I just found out about the moon, I was in shock. I needed something—"

"Oh, and where did you get that something? Did you get it from Klaus?"

"If you'd just learned that you'd lived four years alone, without your family, without your father, without the woman that—" Luther cuts himself off, trying his best not to look at Allison, "then you would have done the same!"

"No, see, your issue isn't that you went to a rave, Luther. It's that we went through shit too. We went through shit as well in that house, Luther," Diego says, pointing at Luther with his knife. "I—I was locked in water tanks for hours at a time, days even. Klaus here was left in a mausoleum with corpses at the age of eight! Ben was forced to release a monster every single mission and yet did you care then? No. You didn't do shit. But as soon as you figure out that Dad was a dick to you, too, you completely fall apart. We already fell apart, years ago, and you acted like you were oh so strong because you didn't go to drugs like Klaus, or manipulate your way into a career like Allison—"

"Hey—" Allison cries, sitting up.

Diego continues. "And now you have the nerve—"

"He gets it, man," Ben interrupts, holding out a hand. Luther looks at him in relief, expecting sympathy, but the look Ben gives him is tired and cold. Why is everyone suddenly against him? "We have to work on the plan."

"What the hell—" Luther starts, but Allison lays a hand on his shoulder and he stops.

"Of course you're on his side," Diego says.

"I'm not—" Allison exclaims. Diego interrupts her.

"I'm leaving." And just like that, he turns and walks off.

"Diego's leaving," Klaus whispers to Five.

"Klaus, shut up," Luther and Allison say, nearly in unison.

And just like that, the meeting's over.

* * *

The apocalypse isn't as quiet as Luther would have thought. The sun is up, the wind blowing, and he can hear the crackle of fire everywhere he goes. Not only that, but the cockroaches are everywhere. He'd never taken the "cockroaches are the only thing that will survive the apocalypse" thing seriously, but apparently it's true. And disgusting.

Five has told Klaus to delegate them each duties—they can't actually touch anything, but they can walk, sit, and see. Despite their lack of, well, solidity, Luther is glad of the task—as much as he hated the moon, he liked the routine. He likes having something to do every day without any complications or confusing feelings. Now that he's home, even outside of the apocalypse, things have been far too complicated. Did his siblings kill his father? Does Allison love him? What's the right thing to do, ever? People are far too layered, and Luther likes things to be black and white.

He and Allison are looking for food. Five said that finding it isn't necessarily difficult, yet, so they shouldn't be doing anything about single cans of soup, or individual packets of chips. Only if they find a grocery store, or a restaurant kitchen, they have to go back to the main camp and have Klaus or Five come with them to collect things.

"I hate having to take orders from him," Luther says. It's been grating on him for the hours that they'd been there. "It's embarrassing." He'd gone from leader of a superhero team to a washed up, lonely idiot. And then he'd thought he'd found solace on the moon, with a mission and a purpose, but it was all a lie. And now he can't even collect food without the help of a junkie and a thirteen year old boy.

There's a pause. "Diego was right, you know."

"What?" Luther asks, turning. She's stopped rummaging through cabinets to look up at him.

"I mean, I wouldn't have said it in those exact words, obviously, but they were right."

"What does that mean?" Luther sputters.

"With Vanya, I don't know. You defended Dad for so many years, even though you knew what an asshole he was. Why?"

"I don't—I don't know."

"No, you don't. And I'm pretty sure it's because you didn't suffer in that house. We all did—or Diego, Klaus and Ben did. Klaus and Ben especially. And they told you, but still you defended him."

"I'm—I'm sorry."

"Are you?" Allison asks, and waits for an answer. Luther can't give it. He doesn't know if what he believes is wrong, but he can't pretend he doesn't believe it.

He's starting to see, though. Especially after learning about the moon. He's starting, trying to see.

For a little while there's no noise except for their footsteps against the rocky ground.

"I have a crazy idea. Could we maybe...visit the academy?" Allison asks, shaking her head. "Maybe it's still standing. Maybe some of our stuff is there."

"Sure, I guess."

"Okay," Allison says, grinning at him. "Let's go, then."

"Yeah," Luther says, and he lets himself smile. Luther isn't sure if they're still fighting or not, but if she's suddenly feeling forgiving then he's not complaining. "Lead the way."

"Oh, my god," Allison breathes when the building comes into view. Luther's mouth falls open.

The entire building is demolished. Completely destroyed. Only the lower parts of the outer wall remains.

"Do you think anything survived?" Luther asks.

"I honestly have no idea."

Luther rushes forward, scanning the wreckage. Allison follows suit. Luther isn't sure what they're searching for, but he's never been so frustrated at not being able to touch anything properly. It's like they need some remnant, some part of their past life to have gotten through all of this. Because if the academy itself couldn't survive the apocalypse, how could its members go back and stop it? How could they be strong enough?

"Luther!" Allison calls, and he spins. "I think you might want to see this."

"What?" Luther aks, walking over.

"Look," she says, pointing.

Poking out from underneath a slab of concrete, half wrapped in brown fabric, is something red and velvet.

Dad's book.

**thank you so much for reading!! I'm sorry if there were any mistakes in this chapter - i didn't have the strength to edit it as many times as i normally would, just because 1) it ended up being stupid long, and 2) luther. I've been called a hypocrite and a fake fan etc for saying that he wasn't a good person in the show, so before saying something along those lines, i'd like to direct you to the notes of the last chapter.**

**but anyhoo, three chapters left!! Diego is next week, and I had so much fun writing his chapter. comments are my heroin, so please leave one if you enjoyed this!**


	6. Diego

Training in the Umbrella Academy was always torture, but group trainings were the worst of the worst. Diego was never close to any of his siblings. He never even warmed to Ben, who was kind of friends with everybody. During free time he tacked a target onto his wall and snuck his set of knives from the weapons room; he could spend hours just thwacking the knives into the corkboard. He stayed isolated—not because he didn't like his siblings, or because he thought he was above them (although he did, sometimes), but because he had this boiling, ruthless anger roiling away inside him. And he couldn't focus on the niceties when he was trying to calm his simmering insides.

Diego enjoys individual training, that's the worst thing about it. He enjoys fighting crime, saving people's lives. Looking back now, especially, it wasn't that they went on missions and fought that made Diego hate the academy. He tried to become a policeman, and then a vigilante. No, the fighting crime wasn't it—he loved than part of his childhood. It was that they were forced to do it. That was why he was kicked out of the police academy, after all. Diego didn't like to be restrained, and he definitely didn't like to smile and lie through his teeth in order to be polite, in order to follow rules that didn't make sense to him anyway.

Group trainings were the worst. They all went out into the courtyard, wearing their jumpsuits. They were told to fight each other—Diego with his plastic knife set and Luther with boxing gloves. It was easy and predictable. Every day, Allison would win. If they were lucky, it'd be Luther or Five. Diego's powers were useless in close combat, and it irked him that he was forced to participate anyway.

There were stranger days. Their father would stand in the center of the courtyard, journal in hand, directing them in the most useless, confusing exercises Diego could think of. They would take turns using their power while keeping eye contact with someone else. They would use their powers separately, and then all at the same time. They would stand in a circle, holding hands, and use their powers to the best of their abilities. It was all pointless—Luther couldn't throw a punch, Diego couldn't throw a knife, and Five couldn't teleport. Only Klaus and Allison could really use their powers at all, and Klaus was almost always too high to concentrate anyway. Reginald would tsk and write something in his notebook, then leave them in the courtyard to wonder what the hell had happened.

Some of the things Reginald had said, too, didn't make sense, or didn't make sense until years later. "I'm training you all to save the world," for example. He'd said it on an almost weekly basis, every time one of them stepped out of line. Only now did they know the world had been destined to end.

Some of the things he said still didn't make sense now. "Not all of you have reached the full extent of your powers," for example. Luther aalways assumed that he meant they just weren't as strong as they could be, but there was something in the way Reginald said it that made Diego think it meant something more than that. That it meant there were new powers they hadn't unlocked, even.

"Hard to believe everyone's dead," Diego says now, sitting in front of the little campfire Klaus and Five had made.

"Yeah," Klaus replies quietly, and they both go silent.

Diego's fiddling with his rabbit's foot, the one he stole from Eudora. It'd been in his pocket when he'd died, which apparently meant he could interact with it. He supposes the two bastards that killed her would be dead, now. He'd thought it would make him feel better about it, to know that they'd gotten what they deserved. But it's a hollow victory.

A man limps into the half-wrecked building they'd finally found to use as a shelter. It's round, and only the framework is still standing, but it's got half a ceiling and Klaus has been complaining about his eyeliner running in the rain for hours. "Help," he moans, clutching his head, and Diego leaps up into a fighting position.

"Klaus," he warns, as the man falls to his knees and starts crawling towards them.

"Oh," Klaus cries, jumping up. He grabs one of Five's books, throws it at the man. It goes right through. "Oh, goodness," he mutters, and squeezes his eyes shut.

"Klaus, you might want to hurry up?" Diego says as the man gets a little closer. The man is hurt and it doesn't look like he's strong enough to do anything to them, but this isn't the first time another ghost has wandered into their camp. They're strangely aggressive, and always go for Klaus.

It gives Diego something to think about.

"I'm trying!" Klaus cries, and clenches his fists. The man reaches out a hand to grab Klaus's ankle, but disappears right before making contact. Diego waits for Klaus's sigh of relief, but it doesn't come. He opens his eyes, unclenches his fists, and just sits there, a slight sheen of sweat over his forehead. He's tapping his knee like he's going through withdrawal.

"How often did that happen?"

"What?" Klaus asks, seeming to break out of a stupor. He's still tense, though, and still ticcing.

"Back at the academy? How often did you have to fight to keep them away?" By them, Diego means the ghosts.

"Well, that's actually a fun new thing I've learned how to do. Pushing them away. Before that it was just the drugs."

"That's really why you did the drugs? Because of your powers?"

"You didn't know?" Klaus asks, and Diego doesn't say anything.

Five groans in frustration, and the two of them look over at him. He's sitting where he's been for the past few hours, hunched over Vanya's book and scribbling in the margins. "Dammit!"

"Hey, uh Five? How you doin'?" Klaus calls, as Five snaps his pencil in half.

"The plan is to travel back in time and fix Vanya, but for some reason I can't time travel back. And I can't get the calculations right to fix my powers." There's something manic in his voice that worries Diego slightly, and he glances from Klaus back to Five.

"Yeah, you might need a break there, kid."

"I can't take a break. Don't you get it? The fate of the world is resting on my shoulders right now, and if I don't figure this out, then I'll have caused the apocalypse."

"That's not what it means. The apocalypse isn't your fault just because you can't figure out how to go back."

"Yeah, but see? I have the ability to stop it, but I'm not stopping it. That makes it my fault."

"Five," Klaus says, walking over and sitting next to him. "Relax a little. We've literally got all the time in the world right now. Just because you don't solve the apocalypse today doesn't mean you've failed the universe. And god knows, the universe owes you a day off."

Five stares at Klaus for a good few seconds, then slams the book shut and stalks off.

"So rude," Klaus says to Diego, shaking his head, and Diego lets himself laugh.

"Just as crazy as he is when he's an old man," he admits, shaking his head too.

There's a silence, and then Diego says, "So what's it like? Living with Five? We weren't here for the first couple days—what happened?"

"Wow, someone's feeling chatty today," Klaus says, raising his eyebrows. "What happened?"

"I suppose there isn't much entertainment around here."

"Well, you said it yourself—he's crazy. Terrible sense of fashion, too. I tried to get him some new clothes, but he absolutely refuses to change out of his academy uniform. It's tragic."

"You don't seem to be holding back in that department."

"Oh, no," Klaus says, looking down at his pink fur coat and garish floral leggings. He looks like an idiot. "I mean, it's not like the corpses are gonna be using it."

"Still stealing."

"Aw, have some comfort for me. Ever since my family died, this is the only thing that brings me joy."

Diego hmphs and nods, looking away.

"Hey, Klaus!" Five yells, and Klaus stands, Diego with him. Diego's gotten used to coming even when he isn't called. He supposes this must have been what Ben was doing for all of those years. It must have been awful, being so close and yet so far from everyone.

"What's going on, little brother?" Klaus asks, sauntering over.

"Holy shit," Diego breaths, looking at Five's feet. There's a jagged crack through the ground, but it's large enough to be more of a crevice than anything.

"They're everywhere, but I didn't know there was one so near to our campsite," Five says, eyebrows knitting. It's deep enough that you can't see the bottom, and about two meters across. "We'd better be careful—if one of us falls—"

"Yeah, yeah, I know," Klaus says, and then, when Five looks up at him, "splat." He slaps one hand across the back of the other, just to demonstrate. Diego raises his eyebrows at him, and Klaus shakes his head solemnly. Diego rolls his eyes.

"Try to take this seriously," Five snaps. They stand there for a moment, Klaus strange and fidgety, and then Five says, "Is it weighing on you?"

"Huh?"

"The ghosts. Are they weighing on you? You seem tense."

"Oh, uh, no. I mean, yes, but it's not so bad. I mean, kind of awful, but I'm dealing. I'm used to it."

"Wow," Diego says. "You good?" he asks, less in a I'm concerned for you and more of a I'm concerned for your sanity kind of way.

Klaus sighs dramatically. "I'll be alright."

Five nods and turns to look off into the distance. "Well, tell me if it gets bad. We can't have one of the two living people here collapse on duty."

"Great, I'll—" Klaus says, but they hear the sudden sound of movement and voices behind them and he yelps.

It happens fast—Klaus spins wildly, too panicked for the situation at hand, although Diego supposes Klaus has reasons to be touchy right now. Five steps instinctively back, seemingly in order to dodge Klaus. Diego's eyes track every movement—Five's foot catching on a rock, his hand reaching out and missing Klaus's sleeve. He sees the moment that Five leans just a touch too far backward, over the point of no return. He sees the moment that Five goes falling back. He sees all of these things, but only dimly hears Klaus's cry as Diego darts forward and reaches for Five's hand.

And then Diego's standing there, holding Five by the arm as he dangles into the crevice.

Five stares up at him—not in his direction, but right into his eyes—and then down at their hands, and then up at him again. He opens his mouth and then closes it, something Diego can relate to. "What the—" Five gasps.

"Yeah, maybe save the questions for later," Diego says, then heaves Five out of the pit and onto the rocky ground. He's light enough that he doesn't have to pull himself half of the way, but instead lands on his hands and knees.

"What—" Five starts to ask again.

"Klaus." Diego says at the same time, and then looks at Five and back at their brother. Klaus is standing a couple feet away, face scrunched in concentration, fists clenched and glowing blue. He glances up at Diego, then lets out half of a breath and lets himself relax—or relax as much as Diego's seen him do over the past day. His hands lose their light, and his shoulders relax. "How are you doing that?"

"What are you doing? Diego was there—why? How?" Five asks, and Diego can tell that Five can't see him anymore.

"I—" Klaus says, but he can't seem to finish. He looks at Diego as if waiting for an answer, but Diego can't give him one.

"Guys!" Luther shouts, and Diego realizes it was their voices that had startled Klaus. "Family meeting. Now."

"Luther, there's been a—" Klaus says, but then he stumbles a little, his eyes roll back, and he collapses.

* * *

"Wait, so what happened? I understand that he used his powers, but why did he...faint?" Allison asks, looking down at Klaus. They're gathered inside the little makeshift shelter. Luther dragged Klaus none too carefully over here from where he'd originally fainted, and it had taken him some time to wake up. When he did, he and Five followed Allison to the Academy, where they retrieved the book and brought it back to their camp. Klaus had been shaky and pale, and had fallen to the ground as soon as Five stopped supporting him.

Now he's lying on his back, legs bent at the knees, an arm thrown dramatically over his face.

"She's asking...what happened. Allison," Klaus grumbles, then rolls over and gags.

"Not sure," Five says, "but I think it's similar to the reason that I can't travel back in time now. Our powers aren't limitless, and if you use too much of them they run out. Klaus, here, has been using his power non-stop for the past six hours in order to keep the ghosts away from you all. It must have been completely spent for him to actually go unconscious."

"But how did you manifest Diego?" Allison asks. "Could you do it again?"

"Ugh, stop asking me questions," Klaus groans, rolling onto his back again. "You guys are worse than the ghosts." And then, "Oh, wait!" He laughs once, and then grabs his head.

"You okay, man?" Diego asks.

"Does it look like I'm okay?"

"Hm, clears it up."

"We don't have time for this," Luther says gruffly. "Look, Allison and I found dad's book."

"Luther and Allison—" Klaus moans, "look, Five, could you maybe function without a translator for a bit? I'll fill you in later." He rolls over and vomits, a little too close to Diego for comfort. Diego scoots away.

"I really can't. The fate of the world is at stake."

"Fiiiiine," Klaus groans dramatically. "Luther and Allison found dad's book."

"So what? How can that help us?"

Klaus shrugs and leans his head back.

"It can help us," Luther says, sounding disgruntled at being dismissed so quickly, "because this is where he wrote about us. His observations. Including…"

Apparently he's going for a dramatic realization, but Five isn't exactly part of the conversation, Allison already knows, and Klaus is useless on the ground. Because of all of this, there's a moment of silence "Including Vanya," Diego says slowly, in a tone he knows will annoy Luther.

"Yeah, uh, including Vanya. It tells us everything about her powers, about what Dad knew about them, at least." Diego can hear Klaus repeating everything to Five, but he blocks it out. He wants to hear this. "He thinks—thought that her powers turn audio input into some sort of energy. The energy causes strong vibrations in the air, which explains the apocalypse. But she could also use it in concentrated amounts to move or throw specific things."

"Wait, you're telling me that Dad knew all of this and never said anything?"

"He did it to protect her as well as everyone else. You can see if you read it—she had little to no control over her powers. She was like a bomb."

"Look," Allison sputters, looking conflicted, "this isn't the point."

"Isn't the point to figure out why she destroyed the world, not how?" Klaus grumbles, and there's a pause where everyone's not sure if he's contributing or just repeating stuff to Five. "Shouldn't we be figuring out all the shit we did to her as kids, so we can fix it? Forgive me, but I don't see how learning about her powers will help with that."

"Vanya's ridiculously strong. If we need to work with her, or even against her, we're going to need to know what we're dealing with," Five says after Klaus reluctantly catches him up, and Luther nods.

"Exactly. The goal here is to figure out how we can dampen her powers, stop her from being a threat."

Diego glances at Allison, who's sitting tensely, arms crossed. She sits up. "Can we stop calling her a threat? She's our sister, not a mission."

Luther sighs. "Allison—"

"We need to work on figuring out what happened to her during that week, what drove her to try and destroy the world, not how to cage her."

Luther bites his lip and sits back.

"Look, maybe the book is important, but let's not talk about that now. We found it in a bag, right?"

"Yeah, but how exactly does that help us?" Five asks after Klaus whispers everything into his ear.

"Look at it. Have any of you ever seen dad carrying a messenger bag like that?" She reaches for it, then seems to remember that she isn't corporeal. "Klaus, could you hold it up?" Klaus picks up the bag, and she points at it. "That bag isn't dad's. So who had Dad's book? And more importantly, who knew—"

"—about Vanya's powers?" Diego finishes for her, cocking his head. "Check for a name."

"What?" Klaus asks, clearly not following.

"No one would carry a bag like that without labelling it somehow. Check for a name."

Klaus turns the bag inside out, checking the hems. "All it says is Leonard...oh, my."

"Is it Jenkins's?" Allison asks, like she's itching to check the bag herself.

"Leonard Peabody, yeah." Klaus grins, sitting up. There's still a sheen of sweat over his forehead, but he seems to be regaining his energy.

Diego chews on the inside of his cheek. There's something about that name that's been grating on him for the past few days.

"Do you know what this means?" Allison asks, looking around as Klaus frantically catches Five up. "Jenkins knew about her powers—he was manipulating her. And we'd already been so awful to her, growing up. He must have just built on that."

"I don't know, it seems far-fetched," Luther says.

"We know that Jenkins created an entire identity for this. We know that we can't find any information on him. It makes sense that he could have been using her to destroy the world."

"But why? Why would Jenkins want that? Is there any way we can learn about him figure out his past, so that we can understand what happened to Vanya during that week? Was he a criminal?"

"Killed his dad," Diego says, looking up at Luther.

"What?"

"In the academy, we each had to study a case. See the process for the investigation and the arrest. Eud—a friend, someone I knew, got Jenkins."

""I know about Jenkins. We studied him in the academy."

"Seriously, Diego? You really couldn't've brought this up earlier?"

"You know what, Luther? I don't hear you bringing anything to the table."

"I can't believe—"

"You know what, guys?" Allison interjects, sounding tired and exasperated. "Maybe we should stick to the point. Diego, what do you know about him?"

"See, Luther? That's how you lead."

Luther opens his mouth, and Allison says, "Just tell us, Diego."

"If you insist," he says, keeping his eyes on Luther, who's bristling. "He was born in October 1989. Killed his Dad when he was thirteen. He was a minor at the time, and his dad had a record of domestic abuse, so he got twelve years instead of a lifetime."

"Hey, October 1989, that's the same as us," Klaus says.

"I don't see how that's useful, Klaus," Luther says.

"Nah, see it was an interesting case because of that. He was born on the exact same day as us, and apparently he was obsessed. They searched his house during the investigation, and his bedroom's like a shrine to the academy. Action figures, comic books, costumes. The kid had everything."

"Why does that give him a reason to destroy the world?" Luther asks.

"I dunno, but it might have been why he chose someone from the academy out of everyone to help him."

"Maybe he had a grudge, or something?" Allison suggests.

"Or maybe he was just stone-cold crazy."

"Guys, maybe we should ask Vanya," Klaus says.

"That's insane—" Luther says, but he's cut off by Allison.

"That's actually a good idea, Klaus," she says, and Luther looks at her incredulously.

"Yeah, yeah! I mean, we want to go back in time and make it so that the past her didn't destroy the world, right? And if we want to do that, shouldn't we figure out what happened to her during that week?"

"There has to be another way," Luther says.

"I mean, she can't hurt you," Klaus says. "She's dead, anyway."

"I—how about we vote?"

"Okay, okay, just give me a sec," Klaus says, before turning and filling Five in on everything.

"Allright, um—everyone who's for manifesting Vanya, raise their hands."

Klaus, Diego and Allison do, and Five does as well after Klaus whispers something to him.

"That's four to one, bro," Diego says, and Luther frowns.

"Fine, but we have to take precautions," Luther concedes.

Klaus cheers. "I'm afraid I'm all out of alcohol, at the moment, but I could get out the tortellini. Great for morale. We have to celebrate—we're gonna have a reunion!"

**a reunion. yippee!! next chapter is Allison, and for the first time in a while I don't already have it written (i fell into the good omens sinkhole, so we'll see if any fics come out of that). school is over, though, so it'll be up on monday as usual. **

**thank you all so much for reading!! please leave a comment and/or kudos if you enjoyed it!**

**(on a side note, in case anyone was wondering, because I couldn't figure out a way to work it into the story: the real Five, our favorite fifty-eight year old, is with the Commission at this point. he escaped the apocalypse at the last second and is working to find a way to go back AGAIN and stop it)**


	7. Allison

Allison Hargreeves doesn't believe in miracles. She'd spent the last decade and a half of her life living what most people would say is the dream, but she'd lived through a failed marriage and about a hundred failed projects, so she knows that it's anything but. You'd think that Allison Hargreeves's world would be full of miracles, but it's just a barren, chaotic life like everyone else's. She doesn't believe in miracles. But it's going to take a miracle for her family to cross off anything from today's to-do list.

"This is the fifth time he's said Diego was the best in training. Are you serious? Is he blind?" Luther exclaims, nodding at Klaus to turn the page of their Dad's journal ("I'm not your slave," Klaus had said, and Luther had leveled him with a death glare.)

"Maybe I just outdid you," Diego says, quirking an eyebrow. Allison can't help but grin and lean back. These guys are better than any of the movies she's been in.

"You're insane." Luther says. "Now he's saying I contributed nothing in that last mission, but that you were exemplary. I remember that day; all you did was throw your knives once! I was making sure Klaus wasn't a useless ninny like usual."

"Hey, I thought we were friends!" Klaus whines. "I was turning the pages for you and everything."

"I—sorry, Klaus."

Allison appreciates the effort Luther's taking. It's all small things, but she's noticing them. A few days ago, he would have dismissed Klaus, called him an idiot. It seems to satisfy Klaus, anyway, who shrugs and turns to the next page.

"I seem to remember you running off to hide as soon as the bad guys turn up," Diego says, raising his eyebrows.

"Klaus fell! I was making sure he wasn't hurt."

"Wait a sec, I don't remember this," Klaus interrupts.

"You don't remember what?" Allison asks.

"Falling," Klaus replies. "I never fall."

"That's bullshit," Diego says, "you're the clumsiest person I know, and I'm friends with a lot of clumsy people. But you're right, shockingly." He turns to Luther. "Klaus was in the infirmary with a broken jaw during that mission. So why exactly did you run away?"

"Um."

"C'mon Luther, spit it out."

Luther looks at Allison, and she says, "I'm not helping you here, Luther. I want to know what happened too."

"Fine. I was—I panicked."

"You what?" Diego cries, and there's laughter in his voice.

"Wow, the great Luther Hargreeves, our Number One," Klaus says airily. "Never thought I'd see you stoop so low."

"In my defense, their guns were really big."

"They were just guns, normal guns," Diego says, grinning.

"You all know we have things to prepare for," Allison says. "Remember Vanya, our sister?" Luther ignores her, predictably.

"Shut up, Diego," he says.

"Yeah, shut up, Diego," Klaus says. "If Luther here has a fear of guns, we won't judge him for it, right? I mean, we all know about your thing with needles." He bats his eyelashes innocently.

"What? We don't all know about that," Luther says, sitting up.

"Yeah, Diego. What thing with needles?" Allison asks.

"You said you weren't gonna say anything about that, bro."

"I didn't say that, bro."

"Tell us, Klaus," Luther says.

"Well, Diego came into my room—without knocking, I'd like to add, so rude—and caught me, uh."

"Were you shooting heroin?" Allison asks, incredulous. She'd known it had gotten bad, but she didn't know it was that bad.

"It was a short phase, okay? You're not my mom."

"Klaus, you were shooting heroin?" Allison repeats.

"Yeah, I heard you the first time," Klaus grumbles.

"How did we not know about this?"

"It was one time! And besides, it's not like you checked in on me all that often. Bit late to be a caring sister now."

"Klaus—"

"The point—the point of the story, which I'm trying to desperately hard to get to, even though you all keep rudely interrupting me, is that he saw the needle on my shelf and fainted."

Luther lets out a bark of a laugh. "Really, Diego?"

"Okay, okay. We've had our fun. Luther, continue the book."

"Hey, I want to hear about the needles," Allison says.

"Klaus," Five says, coming over the hill.

"Aw, sorry," Diego says. "Guess you can't hear about the needles after all."

"Yeah, brother?" Klaus calls, rolling languidly over.

"It's time."

"Oh. Oh. Well." Klaus looks around at all of them, and Allison can swear, though she's not a superstitious person, that the sky darkens a little.

* * *

When Vanya finally appears, it's all of a sudden, and almost like she was there the whole time. It's as if she appeared out of nowhere, except that Allison can't pinpoint the exact moment where she started existing. Allison's never seen Klaus's powers in action, so this is new.

Although, thinking about it a little more, she really has seen his powers in action. Every time he yelled at nobody, or talked to himself. Every time she saw him staring at an empty patch of air. Everyone had always assumed he was high, because no one ever truly believed that the ghosts were always there, like he'd said. But she'd seen the, herself, over the past few days. She'd seen the mangled, walking corpses clamber into the shelter. She'd seen them walking around on the horizon. She'd seen the fear and horror, the recognition on Klaus's face every time. The academy had been bad for all of them, but she can't begin to imagine how awful it must have been for him.

The sight of Vanya makes Allison's heart hurt. She's still wearing the same white suit as before, but it's mangled and torn. There's an ugly scratch along one side of her face, and all of her exposed skin (which isn't a lot, even with the tears) is dark with dust and dried blood. Allison does think of her as a little sister, even though they're the same age, and seeing her like this is awful. "Vanya," she says, horrified, and Vanya starts.

"Where the hell am I?" she asks, the panic clear in her voice. She turns around to see Klaus reaching out cautiously, seemingly forgetting that he can't touch her. "Get away from me!"

"Hey, hey, Vanya. Calm down," he says, his voice to frantic to be calming. She just looks around at all of them and starts breathing hard, crying out again.

"Vanya, come on," Allison tries. "It's us. It's not Leonard, you're safe from him now."

"Safe from Leonard? You're the ones I need to be safe from. Don't touch me!" she adds, when Klaus reaches out again. Allison glances at Diego, who's looking at her. His eyes say what the hell do we do now? and Allison shakes her head.

"Vanya, I think you're a little confused," Luther says.

"Don't try and do anything. I'm powerful now. Did you know that? I'm special, just like all of you, but I'm more powerful than any of you."

"We aren't going to hurt you," Allison says, and her voice breaks a little at the end.

"How do I know that?"

"We're your family, Vanya. Why would we do anything to you?"

"Well, it's a bit late to act like my family now. You had thirty years for that."

"Vanya—"

"Where the hell am I? What happened?"

Diego speaks up for the first time. "The world ended, Vanya. I don't know if you were there, but we were."

"Diego—" Allison exclaims, shocked at the venom in his voice.

"Diego, can you shut up?" Luther asks at the same time.

And suddenly they're all erupting, Klaus with "Hey, guys, calm down."

Diego with "You were there too, Luther, you saw the shit she did—"

And Allison is yelling and trying to argue over everyone, but then Vanya just screams "SHUT UP!" and they all freeze.

Allison gives Luther a did you feel that? look, and he nods. That thrum inside of her. The ruins are still semi-standing, and the ground didn't shake, but they felt something.

Vanya's shaking, tense and looking around. "Why didn't—what the hell is going on?"

"Vanya—"

"Just—let me, Luther," Allison interrupts. She's grateful he's trying his best, but she doesn't trust him, not really, with something this big. "Vanya, do you remember what happened?"

Vanya just stares at her, eyes wide.

"The night of your concert, something happened. Do you remember?"

"I—we had a plan. We were going to—"

"What, destroy the academy?" Luther interrupts.

Vanya visibly flinches, then nods, slowly.

Allison looks around at the ruined landscape, and then asks, "Was it a mistake?"

Vanya holds her gaze and nods. "I didn't mean—I couldn't control it. I learned how to make it stronger, but I didn't know how to control it."

"That settles it, we have to—"

"Luther!" Allison snaps. "Just—wait a moment." She turns back to Vanya. "You wanted to destroy the academy? Why?"

Vanya's gaze hardens, and she doesn't answer.

"Vanya, please. I swear, we don't want to hurt you. We love you."

"If you loved me, you wouldn't have shunned me for thirty years. If you loved me, you would have played with me when we were kids, you would have helped me when the Academy split up. You would have come to the hospital when we called you!"

"Vanya—wait. The hospital? What are you talking about?"

"After the incident! Leonard called you, and you never even showed up. I was scared, Allison. I needed my sister."

"Vanya, I—Leonard never called me."

"What?"

"I hate to say this, but maybe he lied, Vanya. I would have come."

"Leonard wouldn't lie to me," Vanya says, shaking her head rapidly.

"You didn't know him, Vanya," Allison says. Vanya doesn't reply, just continues to shake her head.

Allison opens her mouth to say something else, but she can tell that Vanya's gone, retreated into herself. They aren't getting anything. She reaches out to put a hand on Vanya's knee, as some sort of comfort, but Vanya cringes away.

What have they done to her?

* * *

Eventually, they go back into their little shelter, leaving Vanya huddled outside. Allison is itching to do something, anything, for her, but since they're ghosts, they can't touch anything. In any other situations Vanya would be piled up with blankets and hot chocolate and maybe a bottle of wine, and it hurts Allison that all she can do is sit and wait for Vanya to speak up.

"So, what are we doing? I mean, what is the point of any of this if we can't convince her we don't want to hurt her?" Allison asks. Five is in his corner as usual, scribbling away in Vanya's book. It makes Allison feel a little pang—their Five, the sixty-year old one, had already filled all the margins and white spaces in the autobiography. The Five she's meeting now is on his way to becoming the one she knows, and she can't tell if that's a bitter thing or a sweet one.

"I mean, what can we do? We treated her like shit for years; it's not like we can just rewind."

"That's exactly what we're trying to do, Klaus," Five says, deadpan, from his corner.

"Okay, you know what I mean! We need to know her side of the story, but I'm not sure we can get her to talk."

"Something must have happened," Diego says.

"We know what happened, Diego," Allison says. "Vanya said it, Klaus said it. We treated her like shit."

"Yeah, but she was fine until last week. What did Leonard tell her?"

"How can we even know?"

"Allison, you have to talk to her," Luther says. "You're the only one she trusts."

"That doesn't really mean anything if she doesn't trust any of us. And I don't want to scare her, crowd her."

"So—" Luther says, but he's interrupted by a soft voice.

"Why can't I touch anything?" Vanya's walked into the shelter without them even noticing.

Allison's mouth falls open. "I—Vanya!"

"Why can't I touch anything?" she repeats, more urgently this time.

"Vanya, we're having a family meeting. Do you want...to join?" Allison asks, cautiously.

"Why are you all alive? What's going on?"

"We're not alive, Vanya," Luther says quietly.

"What?" Her voice is soft, stricken.

"We all—well, we all died. In the end of the world. A week ago."

"Klaus, are you—" she asks, letting the question trail off at the end. Klaus nods.

She looks around at them all and then turns, walking shakily back outside.

"Wellllllll. Anyone up for some refreshments?" Klaus asks after a moment.

"Not the time, Klaus," Luther snaps, and Klaus huffs.

* * *

"Klaus, can you translate this?" Five asks a time later. The siblings have been too agitated to properly work for the whole day, sitting inside and working silently on different things. Klaus has been working on the food stash, and Luther and Diego are quietly discussing the logistics of Vanya's experience of the week leading up to the apocalypse. Allison hasn't been able to focus on anything other than the image of her sister sitting on a rock outside, staring listlessly at the horizon.

"Sure, brother," Klaus says, turning slowly away from the piles of cans. "What's going on?"

"It might not work, and I don't have all the calculations ready, but we have to be ready in case Vanya talks." He pauses while Klaus repeats everything.

"Okay," Five continues, "so I've got the bare bones of a plan. It's not much, but it might just do something.

"Vanya arrived at the St. Pluvium orchestra at seven o'clock that evening, right before the concert itself, which was at seven-thirty. Leonard came with her. It was only at about seven-forty-five, some time into the concert, that she started using her powers, at least if I've got my data right. That's irrelevant though, there's nothing we could have done. We could, however, stop Vanya from getting first chair."

"What? What do you mean?" Allison asks.

"A pamphlet and a pile of newspapers. You'd be surprised what you can find under the rubble." He continues. "There's an article a couple of days ago: Helen Cho, renowned first violinist for the St. Pluvium orchestra, gone missing." He holds up the headline, letting them all see the picture. "We—"

"Wait just a second," Diego says, leaning forward, "that's the lady from Jenkin's house. In the attic. Allison?"

The paper's got a chunk torn out from the bottom and it's crumpled and ash-smeared, but Allison can see it. "Yeah, actually," she says, squinting. "She was in a body bag."

"That's surprisingly helpful. Means Jenkins must've killed her," Five says, clenching his fist around the article. "All we have to do is make sure Helen Cho is safe from Jenkins, and then we're good to go. Vanya won't perform at the Icarus Theater, and there will be no Armageddon."

"Okay, but wait a minute," Diego says. "How do we know she won't just destroy the world from her own home?"

"We don't," Five says. "But odds are she chose to do the deed in the orchestra instead of in her bedroom for a reason. She probably needs the extra input from the other instruments in order to channel the amount of energy necessary to destroy the whole world. If we stop her from getting that spot in the orchestra, none of that will be possible."

Klaus relays it to everyone.

"You have the calculations worked out?" Luther asks, and Allison feels a small rush of relief that he isn't balking at the idea of Five taking the lead.

"Not yet, but I'm this close," Five says, holding his finger and thumb a centimeter apart.

Allison speaks up. "Okay, are we gonna be part of this plan? I mean, can we go back in time?"

"In theory, yes," Five says. "According to my calculations, in the event that we do successfully travel back in time, our current consciousnesses will be placed inside our bodies in that timeline."

"That makes...no sense," Diego says.

Klaus relays it to Five, who raises his eyebrows and says "Try thinking harder.

"Basically, your consciousness will enter your bodies on the twenty-ninth of March, two-thousand-nineteen. My consciousness will enter what I suppose is also my thirteen-year-old body, if what Klaus told me is correct."

"And what happens to our old consciousnesses?" Allison asks. "The ones that should've been there on the twenty-ninth of March?"

"They'll be temporarily gone."

"Gone?" Luther asks incredulously.

"Wait," Klaus says, "but wouldn't that mean we're not here? I mean, if I hadn't done what I did on March twenty-ninth, then maybe the future would have happened differently, right? Which means that we aren't here, which means that we don't go back. Like the grandfather paradox thing, or, or Back to the Future, or something."

Five looks at him in disgust. "Back to the Future? It's a little more complicated than a kid's movie, Klaus. Every time we travel in time, it creates a new timeline. Otherwise we'd never be able to change anything."

There's a pause as they all process this, and then a small voice behind them. Allison nearly jumps out of her skin.

"Jesus, Vanya," she cries, "can you not sneak up on us like that?" But then she sees Vanya's face, and she softens. "I'm sorry, what was that?"

"Did you get Leonard's call?" Her voice is shaky, wavering.

Allison breaks a little inside. "Vanya, he never called me."

"You didn't get it?"

"What did he tell you?"

"He said," Vanya says, and she takes a breath, "he said that he called you. That he said I was in trouble and I needed your help. That you hung up on him."

"Vanya," Allison says, horrified, and stands up.

"He said none of you loved me," Vanya says, and her face crumples. When Allison pulls her into her arms, Vanya only stiffens for a moment. Then she relaxes, and returns the hug.

"Vanya, I'm so sorry," Allison says, holding her tight.

"I'm sorry too."

The rest of the siblings watch in silence, Five probably wondering what the hell is going on.

**thank you so much for reading!! as i said on my tumblr, this was kind of a weird and emotional chapter to write for me, and took me so much longer than usual to write, but i hope it worked!!**

**next chapter is from the pov of...try to guess. see you then, and please leave a comment and/or kudos if you liked the chapter!!!**

**(side note: as someone with a sibling i KNOW that no one calls their brothers "bro" but it's canon so fight me)**

**And sorry for the chapter vomit. It's difficult for me to upload on because of...certain complications, but I'll try to get the next chapter up on Monday as usual!**


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